Sorry for the delay on this one, which turned into two weeks! 😔 But at last, our novice spies are off on their first adventure… finding the office they have been assigned to! I wanted to try a split complementary color scheme in this one, mainly because I have never really worked in one before….Read more
A little Belarusian trivia: what pastry is Malutki eating? (presumably from his favorite bakery on Lenin Street 😋)
New chapter, new undercover looks, new setting! After my initial research, I spent an hour trying to re-locate a picture of the pedestal of the Tsar Alexander statue that was toppled in 1919. Finally found it. But what I can’t re-find, for some reason, is the picture I had seen of the Hirsh Leckert memorial…Read more
I think this moment of parting kinda sums up their relationship :) Also, woah! Check out Malutki in “western costume.” Can’t be bumming around in Belarusian peasant garb if he’s off to spy school! I also tried a couple new things with colors and the approach to the background. In the middle three panels, I…Read more
Tried something different with the layout, which required some real problem-solving in Clip Studio. I wanted desperately to maintain my pace of an update per week, so I chose to revert to digital painting on the backgrounds, and kept them a little looser and sketchier. I’m not totally displeased with the result, because it still…Read more
This was one of those comics where I kept fussing with it after it was probably done. The problem was I liked the look of the characters in flat colors, but with the complexity of the background, the eye-path wasn’t clear–so I added some lighting effects in hopes of guiding the eye. On the other…Read more
No one noticed Masha quietly approaching… 😲 What does she have in mind, I wonder… Not thrilled with how the background came out, but mastering gouache will take time. And I’m torn on the cell shading…I might still prefer straight flats for characters. But the overall look of this comic is close to what I’m…Read more
I’m still not sure about the decision to draw Malutki’s eyes all white, like he’s in the Avatar State or something. I wanted him to look fearsome… But is this the right visual cue? Not sure.
I tried a couple new things in this comic. If you compare the bears’ costumes to how they appeared when we last saw them, you’ll see the colors have shifted, especially Malutki’s. I wanted to emphasize his moral decision to break with Masha, so I colored his clothes with a palette completely opposite Masha’s. I’ve…Read more
Hi! It’s been months and months. But here at last is the next installment. I tried a couple things with my approach to coloring–the characters are all rendered in a tight range of tints and shades of only 3 hues. I was pretty happy with how that came out, but then I’m very unsatisfied with…Read more
