CQ Retrospective (Interlude 1)

Welcome back! It's a short episode this time.

This break from the Nightmare Knight's "dark lord voice" is a little too early, I think, but I couldn't resist the joke. 

We see a fair bit of the Caketown Castle throne room in these interludes, so I regret that it's a bit plain looking. I wish I had incorporated more of the dessert theming you see outside... maybe Cordelia renovated after she took over.

It's probably a given at this point that whenever there's a scene like this with very low lighting, I had to do a lot of color adjustment for the print version. I also made this extremely minor dialogue change, since I thought it would improve the pacing of the line, but I was probably overthinking it.

Again, I jump at any excuse for a costume change. Did I ever design PJs for Cordelia? I should.

This was before Cordelia watched Punisher Pumice with Peridot, for the record.

I really enjoy the tiered structure of this panel. For some reason, it feels "video gamey" to me to show environments this way.

I remember being relieved this joke went over well.

This is the first time the Nightmare Knight uses a contraction. This might seem like an insignificant detail, but in reality, it's an insignificant detail with a lot of love put into it.

We've already covered Parfait's accent, but...man. I'm glad I toned it down.

Bacon did have a short-lived crush on the princess. The princess, for the record, might have kissed that pig.

The color of the Nightmare Knight's speech bubbles nearly matching him makes this composition feel pretty stifling. If I were doing this now, I would probably raise the "When I heard..." so that it overlaps with the first panel and allows some more breathing room in the second.

Tomato doesn't really strike me as the kind of guy to say "oh my gosh."

The Nightmare Knight's knees are supposed to be bent behind his cape. Like, y'know, floating. Unfortunately, it just looks like he has stumpy little legs planted firmly on the ground.

Oh yeah! Remember when I mentioned painting a soft focus effect without using the blur tool in Photoshop? Here's that. I used a very fuzzy chalk brush at low opacity here. I wouldn't say that it's worth the extra effort in every panel, but it does have a nice quality you can't really achieve with a filter. (Also, it's much easier to do this when the foreground object is silhouetted, which wasn't the case here.)

Not to pat myself on the back too much, but I think these panels of Seafoam City at sundown still look great. Interlude 1 really feels like a major step forward for my art.

I think i designed each of those food items individually. I'd come a long way since the undefined bean mess Cucumber and his family were eating in the prologue.

Hey, look who it is...!

Neapolitan! She didn't end up getting as many cameo appearances as I originally planned, but it's nice to see her on the road.

The journal entries were a lot of effort to write out, but I wish I'd done more of them... They're cute! The date "system" is more or less lifted from Paper Mario.

Cucumber's handwriting looks the most like mine. I guess I was out of ideas by the time I reached his entry. (Or maybe he's my self-insert?!)

I was going to say this was the first appearance of the sun, but...

They appeared in the previous chapter. Their face looks a bit different, though... I think that originally, I wanted Dreamside's sun to be serene and elegant, but they turned out to be a goofy smile emoji. It's for the best.

The perspective on that last panel is pretty bad--I'd definitely draw it from a different angle today. Once again, though, I'm happy to see that this was well into the period where I started lavishly drawing food from reference.

I like the dialogue in this scene, but the lettering is so big that it feels wordier at first glance than it needs to be. It took me a while to realize I could have cut down the text size maybe 30% without sacrificing legibility, even in print.

Again, weird perspective, but at least it gets the feeling across. I'm also pleasantly surprised I kept the light source mostly consistent here.

I remember nervously researching this, like "wait, do you 'drive' a train?"

I want to say Cosmo's flying platform is a Paper Mario thing, but I think it was actually a Mario & Luigi RPG thing. What I'm saying is that Cosmo does have vague Fawful vibes, for better or worse.

I think the siblings' cuteness quotient increased in this scene. I also think this is the most effort I ever put into background characters that never speak or appear elsewhere.

You should definitely be able to see Azalea's face markings here, huh... I think I had actually sketched out her design by this point, but I hadn't decided on the minor details.

Reflections!!! I love 'em!!! I have no idea how realistic it is, but it felt appropriate to make the reflections less colorful on the surface of the train.

That symbol on the bag is the "Dreambucks" sign. It is just a dollar sign but with a swirl. Sometimes worldbuilding can just be that.

I love how this page looks, but I really wish I'd incorporated the speech bubble into the panel layout a little smarter. Sometimes I get jealous of Japanese comics for the ability to arrange text vertically with no complications.

It's the first view of Trebleopolis. I painted it blue both for simplicity's sake and to give the feeling of being distant, but it would have been nice to see more lively colors in this panel.

I'm not sure what those clouds are supposed to be. I incorporated a lot of obscure musical symbols when designing the Melody Kingdom, but I didn't actually know anything about musical notation at the time.

Anyway, that's Interlude 1! This post came a little later than I planned, but the next post will still be at the usual time, which is in about a week. Thank you for being here, and please be well.