unsounded

15_46

From the script-
Elka: I know she's leaving you and having someone else's baby -- And that's some awkward shit to say out loud so you're welcome.

I hated trimming that one but there was no room :U

15_45

Maybe it's my ovaries talking, but Toma indirectly saying he likes Elka's face very much thankyou made my otherwise frozen heart warm and a little soggy. Shame he then segues directly into self-hatred.

People ask me all the time if Elka is a self-insert and she's NOT - but she does share a habit I have of using humour and goofiness to cheer people up. She tried it here by trying to joke about her scar, not realising that's a sore point with the Captain, who feels directly responsible fo...

15_44

Knock readily deduces that Cutter stuck the Silver in Ana, deciding that is a much more real and likely scenario than Anadyne simply having vaporised along with the rest of the monster. Frummagems don't easily say die.

I regret cutting short that scene with her and Cutter inside the monster a few chapters ago. Originally it contained a lot more blatant hinting to Knock that Cutter was planning on using Ana as an emergency vessel. I ultimately decided I wanted that turn of events to be r...

15_43

Elka's got a pretty tough skull and skeleton thanks to a fancy pymaric implant that makes them extra hard or extra flexible, as needed. Wouldn't it be great if, before they joined the military, you could make your kid get some kind of device installed that you knew would up their chances of survival? Little qualify-of-life niceties like this are why fantasy is my favourite genre.

15_42

Knock-Me-Down is in there with 'em too, just out of frame.

The script called for a more detailed flashback showing just how Elka and Toma survived that drop but eh, decided we didn't need it. You get the gist. Better to stay in the here and now and advance things.

There are a lot of relationship-building scenes this chapter, and this is one of my favourites.

15_41

There's some pretty good information at the top of the page, and then it gets derailed :3

I really like keeping the Big Picture stuff in the background as much as possible, and focusing more on the personal relationships of characters. When they run first-hand into the Big Picture stuff, then it'll be made more explicit for everyone's benefit.

I've been thinking lately about my instincts when it comes to structuring Unsounded. I don't know if they're good or bad, but they're defin...

15_40

I really like that first panel. Elka looks so deflated and half-dead.

I was going to do a whole torture scene but half-way through thumbnailing it I realised how extraneous it was. Toma and Elka don't have any of the information these guys want, so it would just be Captain Hetr's twisted little henchwoman torturing Elka for the lulz. Which is not in itself unamusing, but she's not an important enough villain to be given that honour.

If you want to imagine how that went down though...

15_39

There was something really satisfying about drawing Duane yeeting that water trough. He's largely come to take his rotten body in stride, but waking up to that face after his night with Lady Ilganyag... I'm not sure he could loathe himself much more. But is it the rot inside or outside that's the most infuriating? Ech.

15_35-38

Four pages today. My instincts were against posting these up separate.

Some interesting developments, I think. Originally this was much more explicit but I found the nudity and flying liquids distracting when I thumbnailed it out, so I dialled it back. It's not about the pleasure so much as letting go; as Duane allowing himself to have someone to cling to, and a moment's peace.

But if Duane takes refuge in the past it requires unlearning a lot of the lessons that have changed him ...

15_34

Would you still go skating with him after that?

I had something similar to this happen once. It wasn't a mouthful of meat but you know how sometimes your saliva glands will just totally wig out and you'll spritz spit out of your mouth all of a sudden? I had that happen right into the face of a guy I thought was totally dreamy while I was trying to talk to him about Doctor Strange comics. Panel three, man. My panicking soul.

15_33

In my research, I found a lot of stories of soldiers travelling with sporting equipment. Makes sense to me. A quick pick-up game of baseball or football or hockey is good for blowing off steam and building teamwork. The Plat brats are not going to be deterred from joining in even if their comrades have about two-hundred pounds and one-hundred years on them.

But Duane can't help at the moment. Cute girl alert.

15_31&32

Two pages today. Stay good, Duane. You've been skating on thin ice all your life; don't fall through it now.

I wound up rewriting the upcoming scene so I could include cameos of Captain Claggart and the Plat lads, since they seemed so popular last chapter. Originally Lady Ilganyag led Duane to a frozen lake in the khert with all kinds of gnarly monsters suspended in it. Which was cool on its own, but I like this upcoming version better. I liked drawing Jon in happier times, too~

Pieces of the past...

Hello lovely, patrons, I hope these wacky times are not treating you too poorly. Go ahead and drop your guard - this is not anything to do with April Fool's. Rather, I thought I would share with you some cut content from Unsounded's first year. 

Initially, I had planned to complement the comic with entries from Duane's journal. In this way, we would get to see first-hand what was happening in reality, and then have it filtered to us through Duane's perspective. I thought this would...

15_30

Lady Ilganyag seems hurt by the two-toes' opinion of her. I wonder if there isn't a lot more to that story than mere "betrayal." Hard to keep the world from forming a poor opinion of you when you're stuck in fractal land with squinty fish and can't stick up for yourself... and when critters like Shaensigin are quick to scapegoat you for anything they weren't able to control.

Duane doesn't look well. Don't pick at his gaping wound, birdlady, it's just going to make him flinch away even h...

15_29

That's my favourite shot of Lady Ilganyag. Ready to administer some Tough Love.

15_28

There is a lot of meat on this page, and it doesn't make either of these boys look all that good.

So was a modicum of karmic justice delivered to Duane the night he was cut down in the snow? It's pretty difficult to sympathize too much with the people Lemuel murdered, but Duane (almost) said it himself: they were still people.

Perhaps more relevant to our narrative purposes, there's a terrible correlation being drawn here at the end. I'm not sure if Duane's ready to accept it, but...

15_27

I really like the visual of Duane's green head cracking open like a rotten egg. And what a putrid thing to spill out, especially what's on the next page.

Lem's eyes are really pink from... the smoke? Or tears? Ambiguous.

15_26

Duane referencing this tearful suggestion from his brother.

Duane's memories of Mikaila are never bloody and cruel like this. She's always the perfect and whole little girl he remembers from his final days. The fact she's showing up like this now is a sign all is not well in-between her father's green ears. And I think it's fairly clear what his imagination is trying to get him to acknowledge.

15_24&25

Page 24 doesn't exist in its final form in high res, so I'm including the web res. I'll have to reassemble it for print, but I've gone ahead and attached the higher res of just the Duane "panels," for completion's sake. 25 is a more standard page.

So that passage of scripture is pretty important if you're Ssaelit. Throughout the story when Duane's said "Ssael fhikemun rish," that translates to "Ssael reveals the way." This is the crux of Ssaelism, and refers not only to Ssael's journey ...

15_23

This is a good page to have in High Rez.

Every so often in the khert, memories congeal into entities. Sometimes ebullient memories join into friendly squish fish, and sometimes bitter enemies become red eels. Sometimes they simply congeal into cancerous, monolithic blobs that rise up from the mnemonic mountains, glance around, then wilt again. Maybe they take bites out of each other first, or crawl a few mountains over to melt into a new repose.

These particular giants all have od...

15_22

In the script Sette tells the lizards off but I ultimately thought Sara's "Rude" was all the response we needed.

We'll go into the khert next to see what Duane is doing. I'm nervous about the upcoming scene. It's purposefully very disjointed because Duane's thoughts are disjointed and angry, and I'm not sure how well it's going to read. It also has a few pages completely free of dialogue and those tend to irritate people, I've noticed. Fingers crossed :)

15_21

Masek's echoing Shaensigin's final words here... and perhaps feeling the weariness she felt. He's a nice boy to comfort his grouchy ol' mother tho.

15_20

Nanna is having none of this, but she may need a bigger wacking implement.

15_19

That human-handed shot of Prakhuta/Cutter was fun to do. I think using his people as pawns here is really the most human thing he's done. He's gone full spiderpaw, so I wanted to show that physically :U

But we know Cutter isn't sincere, right? He told Bastion that his people cast him out, and he's never shown any interest in doing anything to better their plight. More than likely he's stirring up chaos on his way to the coast to mask his and Anadyne's movements and create a distraction ...

15_18

In case you're curious, Nanna is the materfamilias, Masek is one of her sons, and the feisty males are the generation after his. Inak are raised communally and they don't typically know or care exactly who their mother or father is. All females of the next generation up are "aunties," all males are "uncles," and all other inak in their age range and family are brothers, sisters, or cousins.

Ruffles doesn't hang out with her older cousins here much, finding them way too irritable and ran...

15_17

This seems like a perfectly reasonable plan and the most hospitable course of action. If they have a Ssaelit guest, they should let him participate in the pageant and share his culture! If he also happens to turn the entire affair into a lulzy mess and ruin Director Mish's carefully crafted production - well, oops! She shouldn't have been so rude!

We'll catch up with the two-toes on the next page. Minnow should have snuck Masek inside by now, and he'll be sharing news of the outside wit...

15_16

An idea is forming in Sara's brain.

It was fun coming up with that illustration of Ssael. So far when he's been depicted in the comic it's been pretty straightforward. Just a long-haired blond in a little cap looking vaguely serious. Older iconography was a lot more bizarre, always mixing him together with leonine features to strange effect.

15_15

I'm waiting for half a dozen questions on Tumblr concerning how Sette fits that giant knife in her pants and I'm going to have to say they're some kind of fancy roguish pymaric that her granny gave her on her last birthday that displaces Contour Aspects.

I'm really glad I had Sara patting Ruffles' butt on this page 'cause a lot of people seemed genuinely upset for her. She'll be okay, she's used to these brats, and Sara and Siya and her family are good to her.

15_14

Sette's not as *pointedly* mean to Ruffles as the shrine kids - and she sticks up for two-toes a *little* by saying they can be good workers - but you can still see the way just about everyone believes these creatures are subhuman. Sette's had this attitude ever since way back in the third chapter when she was rude to the two-toe pilgrim she met at the waystation.

15_13

Ruffles is too pure.