LEFT BEHIND page 3

Three scene changes in one page! It's like being backstage at a runway show. Now all we need is some emaciated young thing shuffling in and out of their outfit out of the corner of our eyes and the scene is complete. Once again, Ollie handles this with ease. I just tried to stay out of his way. I worry sometimes that I'm a bit too ham-fisted in my storytelling. Given that I've not had any complaints on the boards by people wondering what the hell's happening, I'm guessing that I'm taking the right course.

I did design all the colour palettes beforehand. I knew Peter and Matt's story and the general corridors of Building 26 would be a green/cyan palette. I knew the Human Resources room would be blue, the final panel on every page was... challenging. Recently Ollie read POWERS by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming (go the three names dudes). Originally the sniper story occurred in random panels throughout the story. I pointed out a sequence in POWERS where a news television show is running down the bottom of every page. I suggested that perhaps if we did the same that it might be easier to understand what's going on. In fact, you should be able to read all of the Sniper story separately with ease if you had it in book form.

To further separate the sniper story from the rest of the story, I ended my standard black background and added the blurred blood texture. I think this also leant a subtle danger to the sequence. But then I needed to make this pop from the rest of the story. I normally run a standard "gutter" (the gutter is the distance between two panels). Sometimes I make it smaller for faster sequences, but in this case I made it a fairly large distance from the main story. These techniques are relatively subtle storytelling techniques. The last technique I used was the green lens. This was perhaps over the top, but definitely helped avoid any confusion.

Nana was fun to draw. While I find old Trek amusing, I'm more of a Next Generation sort of guy. Now despite my martial training I'm also a fair pacifist. But if Patrick Stewart said I needed to don the army greens and go fight, I'd be right behind him. Captain Picard is Da Man as far as I'm concerned. I even once heard of IBM showing clips of him at work at one of their executive seminars as an example of a true leader. Anyway, as a pop culture junkie I love the shout outs to old Trek, and Uhura (Nana) was no exception.

As an aside, if you've seen the New Trek, or like the old stuff you're gonna dig this:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/trekkies_bash_new_star_trek_film

Now I'm sure some of you don't check the comments. While I always do (sometimes late - but I'm MUCH better these days) there's some great stuff that happens there. Paul Caggegi, background artiste extraordinaire expanded the video of his contribution to this work including building 26. It's so well edited and scored. It's fast, it's cool and it really seems to be the tip of the iceberg as to what this guy can do.

Check it out here: http://www.vimeo.com/4957527

Oh, and do I know who the sniper is and what happens to Micah?

You bet your ass I do.