Hey look. Mel’s back.

Writing the dialogue for this page was quite the challenge. I felt like I needed to have a lot said between each character, but the first few drafts turned out way too wordy (not that the final product isn’t).

It’s funny. I already miss creating the more silent, action pages that came previously. The irony is that I thought those action pages were difficult when I was drawing those and couldn’t wait to get back to writing boring pages of characters talking at each other again xD

It’s weird doing multiple commentaries about several pages all at the same time.

I probably should have done just a single post that said “Pages 167-170”

But alas, I believe my OCD-ness would have gone crazy that I “ruined the ongoing structure of how I write these commentaries.”

You know, kinda how I ruined any chance of active readership with a 2-year absence >.<;

Ah yes. This page took forever.

But it wasn’t necessarily because I found it difficult to illustrate.

I inked the first 3 panels before COVID-induced lockdown was a thing (no joke!). I wasn’t very artistically motivated during lockdown and ended up being fairly busy once lockdown finished and I returned to full-time work. So this page fell dormant and forgotten for awhile. When I finally came back around to finishing it, I had misplaced it inside one of my other sketch books. I thought I had lost it for good.

I was so pleased with how the main, big panel had come out that I was disheartened to redraw it, further delaying its completion. I was extremely happy (and relieved) once I did find it though, and I proceeded to promptly finish it.

Anyways, that’s a lot of word vomit about nothing really. Hopefully the previous page’s 2 year cliffhanger wasn’t utterly awful.

Phew! That was quite a dry spell between pages, but the newest one is finally here.

It always feels weird providing commentary on the page when the story is more serious, so I’ll keep things brief.

I still haven’t decided how I want to use panels that aren’t just a generic “box-shape.” I do think curved panels, or weird trapezoid shapes can help make the action feel more dynamic at times, and it can create some very unique page layouts. However, they can get messy real quick if you’re not careful and can also lead to confusion on panel flow if they don’t have a distinct order.

I don’t know. I’m not about to stop using them anytime soon, just figured I’d mention that I may overthink panel layouts when I’m drawing a page :\

Also I still need to get better at drawing blood…

Hey I fixed my printer! The ink cartridge was low so it locked up the entire printer and didn’t allow me to scan. I found a work-around by just removing the cartridge completely. Now it gives me a different error message but allows me to go back to using the scanning feature. Sometimes dumb problems require dumb solutions…

(I doubt y’all actually needed to hear that story, but figured I’d mention it real quick.)

Today’s page features not a single normal square/rectangular panel! Wowie! Sometimes I feel like an unusually shaped panel can give a better since of movement, but I’m also really bad at deciding what to use instead…

Also I’d like to keep pushing away from normal, oval-shaped word bubbles. I don’t know, I’m just bad at making good circles or ovals so I’m interested in what else I can use. (don’t mind me, just thinking out loud, might not do this)

Anyways, I was a little hesitant on posting this page since it lands on more of a cliffhanger than usual and since my update schedule recently has been…below average…but it’s finished and this’ll push me to get the next one done pronto, I guess.

Also, for your viewing pleasure: the one upside down panel, but right side up. Now you don’t have to flip your screen upside down. It’s much more evident that I wrote “Ahhh!” upside down once it’s flipped though…

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Yikes…only 4 MitM updates this year… (that’s not good)

Sadly I had further complications with uploading this page, my scanner decided to break. So technically this page has been done for almost 2 weeks, but I didn’t have a way to scan and post it >.<; Anyways, I found an alternative (for the moment) and I hope to either fix or replace my scanner soon.

As for today’s page, I was decently pleased with it. It went through the usual rewrites, has (I feel) an average amount of mistakes, and a decent amount of action that I was fairly happy with how it came out. Some of the inking gets a bit muddy on certain panels and I didn’t shade the unconscious coyote that Dakota picks up on the “HMMM” panel because I feared it would get too indiscernible, but you can’t win ’em all :\

However I would like to point out something else: the panels. Like, the sheer number of how many are on this page. Holy crap! Fifteen Panels on a single page is definitely my all-time high so far on this comic project :O

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Hey look, another long awaited comic update! >.<

This chapter is slowly (very, very slowly) inching its way to a conclusion. I kinda hope to rapid fire the last few pages before too long since MitM’s been really dragging for the last…well…year really…

I was a little frustrated with how this page came out honestly. Feels like the “actions” don’t correctly read and flow between panels, but I also had several different sketch thumbnails of this page that all had their issues :\

Anyways still trying to change things up here and there. I decided to make the word bubble outlines much thinner to see how they’d look (and hopefully I’d like to continue to experiment with different shapes).

Also tried something a little different with the “comic page teaser” that’s usually posted to social media. I’m gonna start posting those here with the commentary as well…just cause I suppose…

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Holy crap! It’s already been nearly 2 months!! I gotta post something!!! O_o

This page feels like it’s been done for more than a month. I finished the sketch and even a lot of the inking weeks ago, but I just didn’t get around to finishing it off. The bottom left panel gave me considerable trouble too…

I’m not 100% satisfied with how that panel came out, but I promise you it used to look much, much worse. Working with a frustrating perspective and complicated movement was a real pain. I’m still (sadly) trying to nail down how I want the magic to look visually and my limitations as an amateur artist have also been a factor.

On an unrelated note: I got new pencils! I’ve literally used the same small box of pencils since page 1 (it’s kinda sad seeing them go…). I still have my old ones…somewhere…but they’re getting pretty small now (and beat up). I mostly decided to use my new ones for this page since I couldn’t find the old ones. Also this new pack of pencils came with a 4H (they go higher than 2H?!), an F (what the heck is that?! “Fine”???), and an 8B (I hardly used my 6B!).

Also if you’ve forgotten how bad I am with action sequences, don’t worry you’re about to get a quick refresher… -.-

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Yay! First page of 2019!

…and it’s already February. Wow.

Long downtime aside, things have been coming along though. Still splitting my time between working on MitM and Eclectic Fidelity (which still isn’t a “thing” yet) and, you know, the rest of life. I could repeat myself about how I’m still trying to update MitM weekly or at least every other week, but I feel like that’s becoming a broken record.

Don’t have too much to say about today’s page itself, but I was pleased with the symmetrical panel layout. Last time I tried a really symmetrical page it felt kinda forced and poorly designed.

I blame the action lines from the edges of the middle large panel on the fact that I was reading manga this weekend. Honestly not sure if that’s how I would have inked that if my reading material had been different…

Also today’s “teaser image” (the small slightly edited thumbnail image I’ve been using on social media sites) features some alternate dialogue I almost used for the actual page. Check it out below.

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A BIG: ONE! SIX! ZERO!

Yup that’s the page number for today. Not exactly special or anything. Just was trying to think of something to start this commentary off with…

It really is beginning to look like MitM’s going to an “every other week update” schedule…

As mentioned last time, I do really try to finish one a week, but things just haven’t really turned out that way recently. On an even more depressing note, MitM barely updated this year! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! >.<

With only 11 page updates this year, the story has been crawling…literally. And as much as I’d love to post one next Sunday to have an even 12 and pretend I updated at least once a month, I know that probably won’t happen with holiday plans and the like…

Which reminds me, I should really consider doing a Christmas special illustration, like…really soon. For some reason, Xmas specials have been a staple of MitM since its first year, SO I CAN’T QUIT NOW! >:[

Oh! Probably should say something about the page. It’s funny. The two panels I was worried about the most (the first and eighth) actually turned out looking the best in my opinion. The top down perspective was hard to conceptualize for me and the slightly upward looking foreshortening was also giving me trouble for those two panels, but they turned out alright. The other panels though…not quite as good…

Several little inking mishaps just kinda made several of the panels too hard to read in my heavily critical opinion. And I kinda wish some of the expressions were handled differently… 🙁

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