CQ Retrospective (Chapter 5 - Final!)

Here we are! The actual end! Let's do it!

The overlay is a bit phoned in on this page, and I feel it works against the composition, especially in that first frame. Also, I'm not sure if I meant for Obsidian's speech bubbles to be missing tails here, but it's probably okay in this case because it's easy to tell who's talking regardless.

The overlay disappears when Quakemaster is weakened by the rain, and the colors become much more muted.

I didn't spend too much time on the background here, so it's a very simple, Art Deco-ish hallway. Of course, the background isn't really important compared to the characters... Quakemaster and Obsidian's relationship was central to the chapter, so I really wanted them to have a quiet, caring moment like this.

I'm really fond of this panel, both for the dialogue and the transition back to Quakemaster's usual style as he readjusts his coat. Having said that, I thought there was a stray brush stroke in the lower left that I just forgot to erase, but that's...his cane? I probably could have just left it out.

The first panel was a bit frustrating. I wanted the colors to reflect the Nightmare Knight's presence, but I think I went too saturated with them. I also think the overlay changing the direction of the rain is a fun idea, but it could have been executed better.

Once again, the Nightmare Knight's cape changes to reflect the Disaster Master he's meeting with. Here, it's a little more geometric-looking, and the usual stars are replaced with diamonds.

Oh, wow! There's a speech bubble missing from the Nightmare Knight in that second panel (he's supposed to say "There is..."), but I just...never went back and added it. There have been similar moments earlier in the comic where I decided "Well, as long as it's still understandable, it doesn't matter," but this feels a bit less justifiable... Then again, as you know, my stamina was really flagging at this point.

Quakemaster, on the other hand, is full of energy! (Or at least he's pretending to be.) So the colors get back to his usual here, with a touch of purple from the Nightmare Knight.

This is the only appearance of Mistmaster's original form...kind of. Once again, here's the concept art post, where you can see a few sketches of what he actually looked like.

By this point in the story, the Nightmare Knight's image had softened up considerably, so I thought it was important to reestablish what he was actually like to the Disaster Masters. Which is to say, pretty bad!

Mistmaster's dialogue, which looks like a mishmash of letters from different fonts, was basically just improvised. I didn't put together a document of letters to pull from like with Rosemaster's initial caps, which made it spontaneous and fun, though I did run out of new ways to write the word "cold".

Speaking of that--when Mistmaster was first teased in the Chapter 3 interlude, his dialogue felt a bit more menacing and less helpless. The trajectory of the story changed a bit since then, as you might have guessed.

I didn't actually remember which watercolor brushes I used for those teaser pages, so I had to approximate the look. I think it came out okay, but it was originally pretty sloppy anyway, so I could get away with a lot.

This page! It was posted after a two-month break, and I struggled terribly with it. You might remember that I chronicled my anguish in this old process post.

Looking back on it now... Y'know, I'll cut myself some slack because I was really going through it, but it could be better.

The colors look much more satisfying after that initial page. Like the casino itself, I wanted them to feel vibrant and fun with a dark undercurrent. It would have made sense for Quakemaster's usual art style to persist throughout this scene, but it was nice to have a break from it, too.

This room didn't exactly have a floorplan, so the positions of the characters relative to each other kept changing. That door looks cool, but I have no idea where it is. I was more focused on style than structure, as you can see.

This panel layout combined with the loud colors is a little overwhelming to look at. I misaligned the two horizontal margins in the middle to aid with the reading order, but I still had the impulse to read down from the third panel just now, so I'm not sure it worked. Cucumber looks cool, though! Imagine that!

So, uh, about this.

In the original plan for this chapter, Liquus was going to get his act together after getting called out by Carrot for being a coward. I didn't go through with this obviously because Carrot ended up being out of commission for this chapter, but also because...it kind of made me roll my eyes when I thought about it. Carrot's big character shift came abruptly, so a scene like that would have made him pretty unlikeable, especially because it would have been played straight.

So, my next idea was to have Liquus take inspiration from Carrot's transformation and become a fully-fledged eel bishounen to win Nautilus over. This would have been tongue-in-cheek, of course, but it still felt stupid in a bad way, especially because I didn't want to lean toward Liquus having any romantic interest in Nautilus. He just wants her to think he's cool and dependable!

From this, it was easy to arrive at the idea of Liquus seeing Cucumber as a threat to his role as "someone for Nautilus to depend on," and it naturally evolved into this.

I said during the Chapter 2 episode that I wanted Nautilus to yell at more people. Well! Who better than this freakin' guy!

This dialogue feels a little on the nose, but I still think it's a good lesson.

I gave Liquus magical boxer shorts here because, well. Because. But in retrospect, it was totally unnecessary. It's one of those things where concealing it just brings more attention to it, like Donald Duck wearing pants.

The contrast in these pages is out of control, once again. Also, I phoned in the ballroom, unfortunately. Parfait's costume is pretty cute, though.

I didn't do a proper drawing of it, but Carrot's formal uniform here is a good look for him!

I'd totally forgotten how much of a jerk Carrot was in this scene. The simple explanation is that I was just having fun, but you could say Quakemaster's curse has the effect of making him particularly hopeless about love.

At the time, I worried that portraying Piano and Ametrine, the established lesbian couple, as navigating difficulties in their relationship--in contrast with Carrot and Parfait, even--might be offputting for some. If anything, I hoped seeing their struggles would make them more, well, normal.

I like this sequence of panels. I was trying to channel josei manga energy.

The tonal whiplash after the Liquus scene had nothing to do with my depleted energy at the time! I just love melodrama!!!! Sorry!!!!!!!

The Quakemaster overlay is barely present here, but I actually think it's more effective that way, though it has less of a Cubist feel. That stray line coming off Ametrine's shoulder in panel 2 is a small thing, but it's cool!

I truly relished writing this. Carrot Finally Told to Shut Up [REAL]

And that's it! The final page of Cucumber Quest (as a comic)! I think it was a nice one to end on.

...Except it wasn't actually the last one I made!!!!!!!! I got a full page into this scene before admitting to myself that I had to stop. It's a shame I didn't post this in full, because I think it looks quite nice, but it would have been a huge bummer to end on.

So! That's the end of Cucumber Quest as it was. Of course, there was also the ending of the chapter posted as an illustrated script...

It was a shame that I didn't get to finish Chapter 5 as I'd originally envisioned--the confrontation between the Nightmare Knight and Quakemaster was something I'd been looking forward to for a long time. But I have to stress that this compromise was necessary for me to complete the chapter at all.

"So, what happened?"

I burned out! There's really not much more to it. I worked on Cucumber Quest until I hit a point where drawing pages felt impossible, and then I had to stop. I'm not going to make the usual blanket statement about big, long webcomics that you might be expecting from me; the truth is, there are creators out there for whom updating the same thing for 10, 20, even 30 years is not an issue at all, and I respect them tremendously. I can only say that personally, if I'd had more realistic expectations about what I could do with this webcomic going in, it would have been half the length. But we live and learn.

Cucumber Quest means the world to me, and I do want to finish the story, not only for myself, but for the many readers who have given it so much of their time and energy. I can't do that right now. I need to take time to explore new things, creatively, professionally and personally, before I can confidently return to CQ. I honestly don't know how long that will take, but, barring anything catastrophic in the meantime, I promise that I will return to it. I hope you can understand.

"So, what happens now?"

I'm, uh...not sure. Now that we've reached the end of this series, I will need to come up with a new reward for the $5 patron tier. These posts highlighting my process have been fun for me (and I hope they've been enjoyable for you too!), so I'd like to continue doing something like that. I'll keep you updated, but please feel free to share any suggestions for things you'd like to see going forward.

For now, thank you for reading!