I wish I still had the production e-mail thread. I think Valerie and I did this one exclusively in Clip Studio Paint. Beyond that, my memory is fuzzy. I'm still in awe of the textures she added, the way the inverted outlines pull us away from the Real.
Around this time I was pretty into Kyoko Okazaki and the kind of sensuality she gives to her characters. In an economy of line there's a sleepiness, boredom, pleasure, disgust, carnality in their eyes. Draftsmanship has never been my strongest suit, and I wanted to channel more than the functional shorthand I'd learned over the years. I wanted the characters to feel things I'd never conveyed in drawing. This feeling couldn't just be drawn - it was a matter of energy, color and vibration. I think the page is a fun exercise, the kind of thing I pulled out now and then with the goal of communication. Speaking directly through the medium I've adopted is a goal that can never be perfected; in turn, it generates endless fun and possibility for me.
16 thoughts on “#953+ – the truth”
rikushix
I've always loved the fact that Will consults what is almost undoubtedly a Chinese take-out menu in the process of, uh, diagnosing the ailment in question.
Rezmason
I'm not sure whether Eve meeting Eve is the last pun in OP about her name, but it's definitely the most climactic.
peakpointmatrix
During the original run, viewing this page on mobile made my phone at the time become molton hot 😛
Cave Woman's "OK" sign as she fizzles out of existence always kills me.
Amy
Lollll. I remember the cave woman! So silly. What a great little surprise that was, the colors, animation, the perfect 'chrp chrp'… interjected into what is an already very fun (and steamy) moment between these two!
Jam
I don't think I clocked the first time around how the cavewoman has Olly's face. What does it mean…
Av3ri
I don't think I would have ever noticed that if you never pointed it out
Dr. Lee, Ph.D
god i wish sex was ever this simultaneously thematically/carnally satisfying. props to the chef, etc. etc.
bryanew710
Right? A little franticness would be pretty cool.
PersonalGenius
I love the insane dialogue in this strip. How many genres of sexy role play they go through. It’s the kind of thing that happens when you’re so excited that you can’t just pick one thing, so you go through everything.
Suzie
Can Hannah and her mom can hear every word they're saying? the house doesn't seem very big ?
Tangerine
My headcanon is that they've (quite improbably–we've just seen them in a haze of fond tiredness together on the couch) cleared out–or that the house is implausibly gigantic.
Because otherwise they'd have to be aware that Hanna and her mom can hear every detail without so much as a door between them, and that would be off-puttingly inconsiderate, as well as being a . . .does it rise to the level of a kink?. . .that we've not seen from either of them: a desire to be overheard. We've had plenty of opportunity for both Will and Eve to demonstrate that form of exhibitionism, and neither of them have in any of the past encounters we've seen.
cwbuecheler
I like the little moment of adjustment in panel eleven. Communication during sex (or at least an illicit hallway fingerbang) is always important.
Edit to add: Eve has spent much of this comic using casual sex almost as a shield, and at no point has it ever seemed particularly fulfilling for her (not even with Park at the hotel), so it's nice to see here that she's found that when you couple the experience with genuine connection with another person, it can really elevate things.
valerie halla
heheheh, this one was a challenge but it was fun — we used the at-the-time brand new animation features in clip studio paint! sometimes the coloring process was fairly hands off, but there were times, like this sequence, where there was an idea but getting all the way there required a lot of collaborative back and forth from both of us. too bad the clip files for this one were like a million megabytes!!
if i had considered that this would need to be posted as one big gif, i would have maybe gone a bit easier on the soft shading, but i'm very happy with all of the panels individually.
Mark
So I've been reading (and enjoying re-reading) this comic for a while. And I realized that this page was the one that really stuck with me on my first go-through, even more than lizard brain. I honestly thought that this was the page that made the jump from black and white into color, because the emotion and vividness are just all so there.
jeybork
Thank you for the Kyoko Okazaki tip!
Amelie W.
Finger-fucked back to the stone age, huh. That's new.