Hutcho

Hello! I thought I would update you on the making of this scrolling picklet adventure,
The 3 Baddest Bandits of the Wild, Wild West.

Yep, that’s the title. I forgot to tell you that in the first post. Note: In order to have a clue what I’m rambling about, you probably wanna read that. Anyway…

One of the scenes of Tobacco Joe (my chapter) has a shot of him robbing some dudes during a poker game gone bad. To show both the scared dudes, as well as a shot of Tobacco Joe looking mean, i thought i’d split the shot into two, divided by a stack of chips, which would act as a wipe! So i did a little digital mockup and had a look at it in the editor.

It wasn’t bad, but then I had an idea. What if instead of the whole screen panning from left to right, I did one of those fake pan-around deals like in the cartoons? You know – making it look as if you were actually walking around the table. You’d not only see each character’s face, scrolling to the left, but then the backs of the players in the foreground would move to the right. Get it? I sort of did, but it wasn’t really clear. So for no reason I re-drew the shot in a stupid style. It didn’t help one bit.

I’d already drawn a wide shot of the poker game in the previous page, so I had to keep the position of the players consistent! I knew we’d have to start looking over Tobacco Joe’s shoulder and have one of the players clutching his arm with an ace up his sleeve. We’d then travel to the opposite side of the table, ending with looking at Tobacco Joe from front on. So, which of the players in this drawing would be holding his arm? If we wanted to look over Joe’s right shoulder, it would have to be Beardy or Moustachey down the front there. I think I wanted to draw Moustachey more. OK, so if that was the case, which is the best direction to move around the table?

I mucked around a bit more, but I couldn’t really grasp it properly. What order would the people appear in? Who’s faces would we see, and who’s backs? What direction would they scroll in? So instead of really thinking about it, I drew Tobacco Joe twice more, using a red pen.

So finally I resorted to drawing up a little top-down diagram to figure out what you’d see if you were to walk around the poker game. That kinda cleared it up for me! Well, not really as it happens, because I made the background go in the wrong direction at first. But when that was fixed, the whole shot ended up looking pretty good! I even added moving pupils on Moustachey (who got labelled Dapp in the diagram), moving hands on Muppet (the tubby fella), oh and Dapp even got a moving arm which took quite some time to make not fly off into space.

	Here is the sequence in stilted, animated GIF mode! But never mind that. If you want to see how the picklet really looks, I did a single-panel draft to show ya. After clicking the link, wait a few seconds for it to load, then use the gold slider to scroll through the opening panel to Chapter 3: Tobacco Joe from Marlboro! This link is to watch it on yer iPhone! Here’s a link to look at it on the computer. And if you’re wondering what the third bandit looks like, feast yer peeper’s on Arran McKenna’s terriffic art-in-progress for Chapter 2: The Lassoo Lass, Sue McGoo!
That’s it for now, pals. It’s 2:06 and there’s still a bit left to do on the picklet. It was due to be finished two days ago, so Arran and me have been up late colouring and drawing like freaks. We are tired, but then again we ain’t tired, we’s my brother (of art) …. ok i’m tired! Goodnight.