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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Instead of dwelling on how this week’s page is once again a day late, let’s just focus on this cool page ^^;

So…this page sure doesn’t have many panels! Ain’t that interesting!!

…

…don’t honestly have much else to say :\

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Yay! Ryke is back! Well…not yet, but at least he was mentioned.

I actually debated with myself all the way up until drawing this page this week whether or not I should keep Ryke. Er…what I mean by that is whether or not he would stay in the chapter. I very seriously considered just having him give the bandits a map or directions to the carpentry and then saying “toodles!” But after thinking it over I decided that I could use him effectively in this chapter.

Let’s dive into the art of this page, cause I actually have some stuff to say about that.

First off, my bad on the top two panels. I didn’t realize I was shading on a textured surface till those were finished, so they have some weird subtle texture to them. ^^;
Also in the top right panel, Ryke’s eyes (in my opinion) came out terrible! D:< I almost inked over them, but was afraid it would just look sloppy... The two other Ryke panels, I like. I think they have some fun detail and an easily distinguishable character. And then that leaves us with the other two... I'm gonna go ahead and say it up front: I really like both! HOWEVER! I think the bottom one does a better job of separating the characters from each other and the background. I feel that one of the differences between the two panels is that the top one has about the same amount of small details on the characters and the background, while the bottom one has less small details on the characters (mostly because they are closer) and more details in the background. I tend to get pretty line heavy in my background details, so I hope to counteract this by drawing less small details on characters in front of detailed backgrounds. Maybe that'll fix it (or maybe it won't!) xD On the whole page, I really tried to build the backgrounds around the characters. Some lines halt before touching the characters or just help accent the character. I really like this idea (even if I didn’t pull it off very well on this page), but I hope to make backgrounds more like that in the future.

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Alright, so this time I was late just to plain old procrastination…

The page was actually finished early today, but I didn’t get around to actually uploading it till now.

Anyways, what’s done is done. As for the comic itself, I really wanted to have a simple 9 panel layout for once. I feel like I’ve done this before, but I’d have to go back and check for sure. It’s pretty tempting to just go with this setup for pages since it can communicate a lot of info and be easily modified to have larger 3-panel long panels for mixing things up. After all, Watchmen did the 3×3 grid so well.

So…the joke for the bottom half of the page I actually wrote awhile back. Several months ago, I started a written side story set in the MitM universe (spoilers: It’s some backstory for the bandits). Originally the joke ended with “Well, someday you’ll get a chance to go read it…” because ideally I would have finished writing it. Well…that obviously happened >.< It's some needless backstory that doesn't really add anything to MitM's story, so I have no plans of deeply exploring it in the comic. However, to help make them deeper characters, I planned out a lot of their life story. I feel like it'll be good writing practice to still write those stories out, but with just words, not comics. It's been a decent challenge (that's part of the reason it's not done). Hopefully I'll finish it one day though. JUMP to page Page 137

Chapter Six! Begin!! 😀

And you thought I wouldn’t get the page done this week. Ha!! Well I did! (and with only less than two hours left to the day…)

What a chapter starter. Not my favorite first page of a chapter mind you, but I was decently impressed with my (sorta) fish-eye lens panel. First try with a shot like that and I’d love to do it again. I still need to work on balancing my inking and graphite better though. This page feels like it suffers from that a little more than some others, but one can’t improve without making missteps along the way ^^;

Don’t tell anyone else, but technically I was still designing the bandits’ disguises midway through inking this page >.< Also kinda regret making the character with the longest hair have black hair. Sorry Mel, but when I use a softer, darker pencil in large areas it comes out looking really grainy unless I put some extra work into layering it with different pencil strengths... JUMP to page Page 136

Wait a second…
That’s not a new character! (Although I suppose the five other coyotes around him are…)

Alright! Another chapter done!

This one was challenging and exciting (at least on my end). I finally got around to revealing Coy (er…Chance), practiced a lot with my art style, dived more into Janice and Ray, and hopefully setup the next chapter to keep the reader on the edge of their seat! Also, fun coincidence, but I ran out of plastic sleeves and paper in my binder exactly on this page. I can obviously buy more paper and sleeves, but I’m beginning to think I should get a new binder…

It turns out 140 pages will fill a one-inch binder up pretty good (and that’s with two papers slipped back-to-back in the same plastic sleeve!) :O

As much as I really, really want to dive right into this next chapter, I’m probably gonna take a short break from MitM (but not too long of a break, because then I’ll never come back to it) 🙁

This next chapter is going to be fairly important (spoilers!) and I really want to do it right. There’s a few other things that needs to get done as well. For one, I need to get Nicolas’s bio finished and added on the cast page (I’m done with his drawing, just need to write the info). Another thing that’s been on the back-burner for far too long is a side written story taking place in the MitM universe that I’d love to finish. And finally, I’m considering actually doing some marketing for MitM (because if you haven’t noticed, the MitM fanbase is kinda small) :\

I don’t have any serious plans, but at least something more than just a tweet whenever I post a page. I might get a banner together that I can use as an ad, and pay to get up on places like FA or the like. Of course, I can’t exactly do an awesome job of spreading the word by myself. So…this is my formal invitation to tell your friends about MitM! Help get the word around that there’s this lame webcomic called Mutt in the Middle that’s not exactly dying, but would truly appreciate the support. ^^

So until I return, stay here.
Like literally.
Never leave this page.
NEVER.
O_O

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I’m pretty sure “It’s complicated” has been my most used cop out so far. Whenever a character says that, it’s basically been code for, “Hey, this is important, but I’m gonna draw it out to a later time to resolve,” or occasionally it means, “Hey, I’m not done writing, so I’m not even sure what the answer is yet” xD

Bonus points to anyone who figured out where Nic previously showed up in the comic. I plan to more directly address him in the next chapter, so no worries if his brief, obscure appearance before this evaded you.

Tried implementing some more diagonal or non-rectangular panels on this page. It’s pretty tricky properly balancing the page once you start introducing different angles and shapes. On the other hand, the unique diagonals can create some impressive contrast and guide the reader’s eye if used appropriately. Even though there have been several different non-rectangle panels in this chapter, I’ve still kept my distance from one type of panel variation. The curved panel, or basically anything without straight borders. Why? Well I don’t hate them. Heck, I’ve seen them used exceptionally well in stuff like Habibi by Thompson with it’s elaborate shapes and curves that provide a unique dynamic. However, partially due to my more angular style, I’ve stayed away from it so far. Who knows though. Come an impressive fight scene or something else, I might try to work it in someway…

Also…
What’s this?? Another new character??!! :O

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