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Plague Rat – Chapter 5, Page 32

Description

Panel One: Narration: "Later" Cal and DJ in their room. DJ is closing the door behind them as they walk in. He looks almost dead, with his tongue sticking out. Cal is walking in front, shurgging in a nonchalant manner and smiling in a teasing manner. "Oh, c'mon, the tikka masala wasn't that spicy!" he says. "Ugh..." goes DJ. "You had one bite!" Cal continues.

Panel Two: DJ points dramatically to his ears and says, clearly annoyed, "I can feel it in my ears!" Cal is mostly out of frame, with only his hand visible, waving dismissively as he talks. "Okay, fine, if you're too hot, I'll open the window," he says.

Panel Three: Closeup shot of Cal's hand as he reaches for the latch on the window. "It's stuffy in here any-" he beings to say, but is interrupted sharply by DJ. "You can't do that."

Panel Four: Headshot of Cal as he looks over his shoulder at DJ/the viewer. "Why not?" he asks. From off-panel, DJ says, "They don't open." "Well, if they don't open -"

Panel Five: Cal continues from off-panel, "- Why is there a latch?" Waist-up shot of DJ through the window. He looks shocked and somewhat traumatized. The framing of the window panes resembles bars caging him in.

Author Note

This is what we call "Learned Helplessness" and it's an incredibly nasty, pervasive form of abuse and control.

Luckily, Cal is there to upend things!

Okay, so there's a lot going on here in Casa de Rabbit, but they're good things, and hopefully it won't interrupt the comic any! I'm also doing some art of OC-tober, so I'll be posting that here and there, as well.

Don't forget your shots!
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