Hmm…how do the bandits possibly think Dayton can help them out? Drake (as usual) ain’t too wild about the plan.

Hey! Christmas is only a few days away!!

So I’m gonna be gone, traveling to spend the holidays with family next week, so I can’t guarantee an MitM comic next week. I’ll see what I can do, but I probably won’t have access to a scanner even if I do finish a page.

I also normally do a holiday sketch, but I’m not really sure what to do for a drawing (and I still have the same issue of maybe no scanner). Who knows, inspiration may smack me against the head and I may find out I have tons of free time to draw, so maybe something will show up.

But in case you don’t see me till next year, I wish y’all a pleasant and safe holiday season ^^

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And it was beginning to look like I would only update every other week instead of weekly, but no, I was just a day late this week ^^;

Frankly not wild about all the middle panels, but what’s done is done. And yes, if you’re wondering what Dayton is doing in panel 4, he’s just waving to some random dude (or dudette) that just happens to be roughly where the viewer would be. Yeah, after it’s done and all, it’s definitely one of those things that just seemed better in my head. Also that panel transition from the previous panel is pretty rough in my opinion. Probably has something to do with having the bandits in such a different pose…

Also, can we have a “hooray” for more “needless bandits antics”???

……hooray.

I feel like the story is finally getting somewhere though, but the problem is that the closer I get to landing on a solid story, the more sketchy the landing ends up looking >.<; But keep your fingers crossed, and things might actually get interesting for once in MitM! :D JUMP to page Page 148

I’m back (again)!

Did I say I’d only be gone for a week? Silly me, I totally meant two weeks ^^;

…Alright, you caught me. I wanted to update last week, but I was really stumped with what I wanted to do with this page for forever. Eventually I changed some major things at the last second (I even wrote a new word bubble to photoshop in over an old one because I changed a line that late in the page’s process). Well, we got here, and now I need to go worry about writing the next page >.< As usual, some of the inking could use some work. The page is a little odd (in my opinion) with how much of a focus is spent on faces, almost giving the page a "crowded" quality that some of my other pages don't have to worry about. I spent a good amount of time lining up and placing the word bubbles. I wanted quite a bit of important conversation on the page and several different character expressions, so I tried to make sure the reading flowed better than usual. The are a couple of MitM's previous pages that really bother me with how unintuitive they are to read. It's definitely an issue I run into with my work, so I want to work on fixing it :D Hmm...should I go into what changed at the last second about the script? I'd like to, but at the moment I'm afraid it could spoil a few things, so I'll hold off for a bit. I'll talk about it by the end of the chapter, that is if I don't forget, so remind me if you really want to know :P JUMP to page Page 147

Well…

It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? Somewhere around seven weeks actually -.-;

Sorry everyone. October was crazy busy for work and travel, and on top of everything I was (still are) getting ready for my first art dealer table at a convention. That convention is next weekend, beginning the day after Thanksgiving. So…while I’m finally back with a new MitM page, there’s a pretty high likelihood that there won’t be another page next week 🙁

But I at least wanted to get one done this week since I had a little extra time available. This page has actually been sketched out in my sketchbook since before I started my break. I almost had enough time to draw it back then, but I would’ve really had to be pushing it, and – if you can’t tell from reading the page yourself – it was kind of a cliffhanger that I would’ve felt guilty about leaving everyone on for over a month.

That said, it’s kinda noticeable with this page that I’ve had a long break. It looks terrible! The ink job is definitely below par, some of the characters aren’t well defined, and oh gosh, the last panel’s perspective is one of my biggest perspective goofs in a long time…

Anyways, the comic is (hopefully) about to get really interesting (because, you know, it hasn’t been so far :P). What’s got Sam on edge? What’s Nic after? Who is Nic exactly? (Since I haven’t explained that very well…) And who’s at the door? So many questions! Find out next time!! Hopefully in the near future!!!

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What’s this?! A Friday update?!?! Why didn’t anyone tell me I missed Thursday?!?!?! >.< But seriously, I just had a bad case of writer's block earlier this week when I was writing this page, and then Wednesday came along, and I didn't have anything ready, and I was too lazy to do any work on the comic, etc., etc.. So I did it all late last night! ^^; In the end, even after putting it off and all, it was a pretty fun page. I really liked how I mirrored the three Dayton panels with the three Ray panels. And yes, I realize that this is the THIRD page in a row that I used a long, background panel for the middle of the page. I promise I'll try to mix things up next week... Hey would ya look at that. Coy is back! :D (And only a split second too late...) JUMP to page Page 145

So, if you’ve visited the MitM home page anytime since 3:00 AM (mountain time), you may have noticed the newest page has already been up for awhile. I finished it (obviously) very late last night and was just too tired to write the page commentary at that time, so I just now got around to writing it ^^;

You know, apart from the book title (which doesn’t follow the correct perspective very well), I’m pretty happy with how this page came out. There’s not really a lot of inking mistakes and I like how the backgrounds and panels worked on this one.

Hmm…so we get to hear a little more info on Ray’s backstory. If I was to take a step back and try to critique my own work, I’m not so sure about Ray’s role (or how I’ve handled him as a character even). Since a majority of the major plot elements were initially jotted down by my high school self, there’s a nice variety of stuff that doesn’t feel very…good. Some things drastically changed over the years like the bandits, who were created on the spot at the beginning of chapter 2, or the fact that Joel (the character that chapter 4 revolved around) was not designed to be blind, but instead handicapped in different way…

When I originally came up with the character Ray, I wanted him to be a writer, thus providing the inspiration for Janice to pursue the same field. He also was going to be at odds with Dayton to provide…drama! But seriously, I felt he was important to the story and included him. However, so far I feel like I haven’t effectively used him as a character, or at least his “page time”. I was mostly pleased with how Chapter 3 panned out, but I cut it shorter than I had originally anticipated to have the “bandits ending” scene. Chapter 5 didn’t have a lot of room for him honestly, and I wasn’t even planning on having him in this chapter at the time of starting this chapter.

Basically I’m not so sure anymore if he really adds to the story yet. I don’t know, maybe I’m just crazy… -.-

I really shouldn’t stress this much over him though. After all, there are sooooooo many “well written” characters in the rest of the comic, what’s only one poorly written character? xD

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Finished this page late, late, late last night, but was just too tired to upload it then ^^;

YAY! Got to try out some new stuff on this page. I really like how the first panel came out with the silhouettes of the bandits. I also love how calm the bottom left panel with Ray is, and I was happy with how I kept the background simple. The fourth panel’s simplicity almost comes off as lazy though… -.-

I was pleased with how the small inkings of the coyotes came out and I was fairly confident that they would be hard to read if there was a background. So instead of simplifying the background I was like, “Screw it! Just get rid of the background!” I’m still not convinced it was the best decision, but at least I was able to experiment with a new idea 😀

Oh! And this is my first “meanwhile” blurb. I’ve definitely cut away for “meanwhile’s” before in the comic, but I’ve always tried to stay away from narration-esque, worded statements like “later that same night”, “elsewhere”, and the like. It’s not that I dislike that stuff, I’ve just never really used it (kinda like how my thought bubbles are used fairly sparingly, and I even question those when I do them…). Anyways, thought I could do “meanwhile” slightly different instead of just within a word box, so I came up with stretching it across the page between panels (almost more like a big sound effect).

Fun side note: I just realized that I didn’t draw sound effects for Dayton running. In my thumbnail rough sketch of the page I drew that panel with the “TMP” sound effect multiple times. I’m content with them not being there, but I should practice my onomatopoeia a little more often than I currently do.

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Well I took my personal challenge from last page seriously. This page is FIVE panels tall! :O

If you haven’t noticed yet, since page 140 I’ve been testing the waters with some silly comic panel teases that get posted to the social media sites (Facebook & Twitter). Go check ’em out if you don’t follow MitM on social media as much.

Hey, question for all you guys. Should I only shade with ink the characters? not the backgrounds?

For a good comparison look at all my recent pages from this chapter. The only heavy inking is only on the main characters. Background elements (including background, crowd characters) are only simple outlines with some pencil shading. They don’t have the dark inking. However, if you look through some of last chapter (when I was originally testing the waters with this style) I shaded some background elements. Both Pages 117 and 119 shade both backgrounds and background characters.

Do you have a preference?

JUMP to page Page 142

I present to you, yet another inking catastrophe! Tada!! 😀
(And a day early!!!)

Yeah, I’m less then thrilled with how the inking came out on this page…
(Mostly the two close up panels of Mr. Connors. Drake and Mel get a little muddy…)

Apart from the inking missteps, it’s an alright page I suppose. For those very few followers of MitM that are actually keeping track of the multiple random ways I’ve been laying out my panels per-page, you might have noticed that I don’t normally stack four panels vertically. I’ve definitely done it before (actually, looking back I did it almost all the time in Chapter 2 and even quite a lot in Chapter 4), but my point is that recently I’ve normally stuck to 3 panels tall on average. I need to make sure not to fall back on the three panel tall layouts all the time ^^;

And yes, I’m sure everyone is terribly fascinated by this subject 😛

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Alright, I’m gonna try something different.

If y’all didn’t know, I post an update to my Twitter and the MitM Facebook page whenever MitM updates. On Twitter I normally post an image of the current page and a link to here, and on Facebook just a link to here. Recently Facebook has been really frustrating getting the link setup correctly with a preview image and all. I’m gonna try cropping out and editing a part of the page to only display in those places. Hopefully it’ll encourage people to come to this site to view the full page.

So how about today’s page? Well I wouldn’t blame you if you complain about the lack of backgrounds (apart from the first panel). I thought about adding it in the middle panel with Mel and Levi, but decided it wouldn’t really help much. The big one though, is the last two where I basically left them in an “unfinished” state. I really liked how ridiculous they were without the rest of the background, so…well…I left ’em like that. That’s about it…

Also I finally decided to squeeze my fursona into a background panel for once. Although it’s not terribly subtle…

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