Hello, everyone. It’s Max West here, live from I-Con over in Stony Brook, New York. I’m here giving panel talks and meeting people. However, I still have time to go over this week’s pages to the fourth episode of Sunnyville Stories, titled “Don’t Answer Me”. At the time of this writing, the episode is nearly finished. I just have to format the pages and do a cover. But I digress.
Some of you may remember on the previous pages that Samantha Macgregor and her big sister, Margaret, went to the local repair shop. Their toaster oven was broken and they hoped Mr. Jakes could fix it – it would take him though over a month since he was backlogged with work. Now we are going to find out why – this page should hint that something is definitely wrong.
I had to darken the pages to allow the pencils to show up well enough – pencils do not reproduce well and this demonstrates the necessity for inking your comics.
It seems that Mr. Jakes is very sad (as if you couldn’t tell by his expression). Who exactly is that young badger in the photo? It’s quite obvious that there is a connection between him and Mr. Jakes’ inability to do his work. Sam and Margaret look very concerned – it’s not just over their appliances. I intended both Sam and her sister to be nurturers. I wanted them to be very motherly, filled with love and concern for others. This is a recurring motif in my work and does have some connections with anime and manga. Many of the good females in my works are depicted as motherly characters. You can see an example of this with the character of Lori in my now defunct webcomic Bleu’s Forest.
It apparently looks like something else has gotten the attention of the girls as they head for home. What did they see? That will have to wait until next Saturday. So what do you think of my pencilled pages so far. Please leave some comments and subscribe to the RSS feed if you haven’t already. Oh yes, as a bonus, here’s a color study for the cover to the fourth episode.
The final cover will be done with gouache paint and india ink. Well, until next time, loyal readers!
