Well, there goes that red rectangle. Taken from us before we could learn anything about its mysteriously whimsical nature. I guess life’s unfair like that, sometimes.

Well, at least Fris here seems pretty happy about its disappearance – for one panel, that is. Immediately afterward, his smile and optimism both get nuclearized as he suffers one of the worst fates in the galaxy: Being left on read. Let’s see if his soldierly improvisation skills can get him out of this mess…

Website-Exclusive Author’s Note:

Boy oh boy oh boy, this page is a huge improvement over the last one, even if I’m far from 100% happy with it: Text boxes, more dynamic paneling, different backgrounds and some expressions that look slightly less awful.

I’ve also decided on halving the previously used 2k × 3k resolution, since my current art style doesn’t benefit from that massive pixel density, though I’m still not sure how I’ll deal with texturing going forward. On this page, I experimented with doing almost no texturing and further reducing my lighting model. I think it looks significantly better than the weird three-stage smoothed lighting and inconsistently detailed backgrounds that the last page had, but the loss of details will probably necessitate me to have my forms, gestures, and expression do the talking moving forward. Since I’m still kinda weak in all three of those areas, I’ll have to put serious time into art practice moving forward (once I can finally find some free time). Let me know what you think about this new style!

Oh, and speaking of time, this page didn’t actually take me three weeks to complete. Honestly, I probably only put about 10 hours of actual work into it, from beginning to end, but Uni work and my endless love for procrastination have given my brain all the excuses needed to drag the making of this page on and on and on. Well, it’s done now, and I’m starting to get more confident in my artistic process. Honestly, I could see myself uploading these on a weekly basis in the not-too-distant future, but I’m unwilling to make any sort of commitment right now with my finals quickly approaching. God, am I not prepared for those…