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Plague Rat – Chapter 6, Page 14

Description

Panel One: Narration: "Next Day" Exterior shot of the side of a stone building with Gothic windows. There's a tree just off to the right, with its branches creeping into the frame. There's a bench in the grass next to the building, partially covered in the shade from teh tree. Cal is laying on the bench, napping, his head and shoulders in the shady half, with his arm covering his eyes. He's wearing jeans, a red button-up shirt with a geometric gold pattern, and dark grey fingerless gloves. There's a stone path alongside the bit of grass, and DJ is walking from the right hand side, leaving the path and going towards Cal.  

Panel Two: Low angle, sort of Cal's POV shot of DJ from the hips up. His hands are in his pockets, and he's smiling a little bit as he looks down. The sun coming through the leaves gives his blonde hair a bit of a halo, and the air is full of shining dust motes and the sunlight is streaming through the leaves. It's all very dreamy. "Hey," he says.

Panel Three: Close-up of Cal's head and shoulders as he moves his arm up so he can see DJ. His eyes are huge as he looks at DJ (off-panel) and he looks a bit dazed or maybe shocked. "...... Hey," he says back. "Uhm... Where's...?" The effect of the speech bubbles is that he's having trouble talking.

Panel Four: High angle shot of the guys, from behind Fern. We see her back as she perches on the edge of the roof, her hands behind her back and her wraps loose and dangling around her arms.  Fern is wearing a collared mint green shirt with high-waisted chocolate brown suspender shorts that gather at the cuffs, which are a bit above her knee. Cal and DJ are both looking up at her. "Hi, guys!" she says.

Between Panel Five and Six is a strip of her wrappings, pulled taught with the SFX: "TWANG!" above it.

Panel Five: Side view of the bench area, seen from the left. In the background, beyond the tree, is a stone-paved plaza surrounded by some buildings, with a some scattered trees and students milling around. Fern is looming over Cal, her shoes on the side of the building and her arms behind her back, holding tightly to her wrappings. Her face is not far above his own. "So," she asks, "What happened?" Cal is flailing and looks terrified because Fern went from up on the roof to hanging in his face in the space of seconds. "GAH!" he says. DJ is off to the side, hiding his smile behind his hand as he laughs. SFX: "HA HA!"

Author Note

Now it's DJ's turn to do the dazzling!

And Fern's turn to demonstrate one of her more... Unsettling habits. Of course, even DJ, shut-in that he is, has seen her do things like this.

Now you see why this page took so long! I tried to get away with less-detailed backgrounds, but it didn't work as well in terms of orienting the reader. Add to that the fancy lighting and the angles and foreshortening and... Yeah. It took a while, but I'm proud of the results, and I hope you like it, too!

See you soon!
Bran

Chapter 5 Progress Tracker

I tried to find way to embed my tracker into the site so that it automatically updates from Google Sheets, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to make it work.

All I can offer you is the link, so if you want to follow my progress and see where I am:

Chapter 5 Comic Progress

If you know how to do this, please drop me a line so I can add it as a widget or something! I’d really like for everyone to be able to see it.

Early Comic on Patreon!

Yep! I’ve set up a Patreon for the comic, and I’ve decided to keep things dead simple for now.

For $1, you can see next week’s comic early!

That’s it.

No fancy membership tiers with merch, no digital download packs, no interviews or super-special content. I know what my plate can hold right now! I did set up patron goals so that I’ll add a bit more when I get people, but by the time I hit those numbers I know I’ll be in a good place to handle it.

Those are pretty simple, too – When I hit 100 people, I’ll add some extra art each week, when I get to 200, I’ll put everyone two comics ahead of the site, and when I have 300 people, they’ll be 3 pages ahead. It’ll still only be $1, though.

Will I set it up so that I keep putting people ahead as the numbers grow? I dunno. I know three pages ahead isn’t that hard for me to do, but more than that? I guess we’ll see. ^_^

But for now, I have a simple Patreon page where you can see next week’s comic right now for $1.

https://www.patreon.com/Rabbit_Dance_

Thanks for hanging with me for so long! I appreciate it!

-Bran

Off to the Printer!

Hey! I’ve got the first issue of Plague Rat DONE and it’s being printed right now!

I was fortunate enough to find a local printer and I can literally just go pick them up when they’re ready. It’s a run of 100, which is a great start. I’ll be putting the reminder up on the website after the con, and adding in a few fun bonus items for people who order physical copies.

I’ll keep you posted on how things are going here, and of course, you can always check out the Discord for more immediate news and to ask questions.

Two Comics This Week!

That’s right! I’ve been having technical and health issues, but I managed to finish two pages at once so you’re getting page nine right now and page ten Wednesday. I set it up for noon EST, so unless the time zone went wonky on me it should update as planned.

If you want to watch me work on the next page, come on over to Twitch and hang out in the chat! Obviously you’ll learn the occasional spoiler, but I try not to talk too much about plot elements unless I’m actively drawing it in front of you.

But in good news, we are vaccinated! We both got the first dose of Moderna, which means we’ll be 100% ready by the time Steel City Comic Con rolls around in June. Evie has a table with her books there, and my goal is to have a finished first issue there, too.

I know I’ve been late a lot, but what’s been getting me are the background elements. To remedy that, I’ve been learning Blender, a 3D program, so I can have whole rooms ready to go. Clip Studio Paint has the ability to import 3D models and render them as linework with textures and all, so this should speed things up quite a bit! I actually have a lot of experience in 3D modeling and animation, so all I have to do is learn how to do it in Blender vs 3D Studio Max. It’s a bit of a curve because Blender *thinks* in a way Max doesn’t, but I’m getting the hang of it.

Actually, the cart you see on page nine is a 3D model that I made in Blender! The horses and wagon wheels are 3D models purchased from the Clip Studio Assets library.

Well, I’m off to bed. Enjoy the new page!
– Bran

Late Comic!

Last week’s comic took longer than I expected and this moved things out of whack, but don’t worry! I should have this week’s comic up by Friday night. I’ve already got the whole page sketched out and I’m working on the inking.

If you want to watch me work on it and chat with me / listen to me ramble, I stream on Twitch pretty much every night, and some late afternoons. My username is Rabbit_Dance_, or you can click here.

Until the next update – Stay Safe!
– Bran