Okay, now we’re getting serious; comic #6 – quite a few changes in this one. As mentioned, the OHB series was something I made up as I went along, trying to let it be a subconscious exploration of what makes humans tick (that was the idea, anyway). So after the setups in comic #5 I decided to push the series a bit in terms of darkness, and see where the writing went; ended up pretty surprised by this installment.
Here it is:
I wrote into the implied darkness held by Steph, intending to maybe get her to some sort of personal crisis, but when we got there it turned into a quite a life-and-death crisis. Sounds bad, overall I think it’s a pretty joyful story though – and heck it’s good to talk about the tough stuff, right? Right. If there’s no dark, how can we appreciate the light? Exactly. Good point, thank you.
Dark moments …
… revealing the ecstasy of light moments …
It was only after I wrote OHB #6 (and #7) I realised it tied in nicely to the very first thing lil’ Steph says about ancient charts ~ at the edge of things, there be monsters. So this is the broader difficulty of Steph facing her own monsters of shame, rejection and the subsequent control she perpetrated. Very human, very relatable, very boobs! Hooray!
Turned out to be double the size of the previous comics, and was only the first part of the fiasco – told from Steph’s point of view. For her dad’s side of things, we have to wait for the next comic! Boo! Yay! Willies! Bums! Anyway, anyway yeah.
In terms of the re-release, there were quite a few typos on this comic and I endeavored to make Steph’s terrible hair prop seem a bit less like a separate structure hovering just above her head! Nightmare. Wish I’d picked a different haircut for the poor girl, it is a touch distracting at times.
Main typo for the super fans was, of course, “hot noddle soup”. In some ways I quite like that typo as hot noddle sounds yummy, but I opted to remove it in the end.
The following renders show the process reproducing the original cover (pictured left), trying to match the pose while improving the general illustration …
… *cough cough* can’t see must reduce fog *cough cough*…
… ah, there she is. Just sort the pose out, lower a strap …
… reduce the fog, tweak the lights …
… combine and increase subject separation to make a more illustrative cover:
Boom. Re-released and very, very lovely. I mean booby.
