Tag: Misfits of Avalon

Page 79 – 82

To push Kimber’s captions I had her think a lot more. She generally has a lot more she is sitting on. It’s why she is the one who ends up asking the important questions.

Also once again I like drawing/toning fire.

Kimber’s frustration with the team subside around when she starts talking to Elsie more. But that rough start I thought would be a good contrast as the two of them become friends.

Page 83 – 85

Rae’s entrance is 100% cool anime person. I was definitely thinking of when Sailor Uranus first appear. Does something cool and then takes off.

Her cool animeness is what makes Kimber get a crush on her.

Page 86 – 87

Kimber is the most interested in their adventure. This I figured would be good way to seperate her from everyone else on the team. But she’s not mature enough to think of a way to win Elsie and Morgan over her than yelling at them.

Another big thing I did with Kimber’s captions is she talks herself up more and repeats her thoughts to show she’s very unsure. It’s why I tried to make her small in that last panel to contrast her telling herself “I can COMPLETELY handle it.”

page 88 – 89

When I designed Kimber’s room I kept two things in mind. What did her mom put there and what did Kimber put there? I wanted it to be obvious when you looked at the room who decided what. So all the big stuff, the bed, the dresser, the curtains, those are from mom and are frilly and flowery. Everything smaller and temporary is from Kimber. So the posters and dresser nicknacks are goth and fantasy based. Stuff I remember for sale at Hot Topic or posters from magazines. This way you are ready for the conflict with Kimber’s mom before she even comes in the room.

Also the fact that Kimber’s mom doesn’t take her to the hair appointment herself and that Kimber can just leave her house without her mom realizing shows how much attention and hands on parenting she is getting. It should make the earlier thoughts of I can only count on myself make more of a picture.

page 90 – 91

Sometimes it’s hard drawing expressions on Cu. I don’t want to go to cartoony or he will stand out compared to everyone else. This scene I looked at a lot of sad dog pictures. I wanted him to look uneasy while Kimber was turned from him and then stiff up when she looks his way.

Again I tried to make Kimber look small as she is all alone to think about what is next.

page 92 – 96

In the diner I managed to get 6 of the 9 kids in Elsie’s family. Two kids at the counter, Billy, and the other two waitresses are Elsie’s siblings. This scene maybe should have been more pages.

Elsie’s non-reaction to her mom’s shouts is to show this is her normal. I think we all have something about our family that we grew up thinking everyone does but then realized is weird as we got older.

The customers leaving and Kimber’s caption are supposed to be the contrast to Elsie shrugging it off. I maybe should have given this another page or so to show Kimber’s face. Her parents don’t yell much, so this is extra scary for her. I only really managed to get a good look at Kimber’s face in page 94’s panel 2.

And speaking of not examining something shitty your parents do, Kimber isn’t immune and definitely picked up some body shamming opinions from her mom.

Kimber pouting wanted her to be really folded up in herself as she is defensive from Morgan making fun of her. I had Billy have a chat with her to just bring him up again in a minor way and so we got a good look at the bandage on her hand. Also cause I thought it would be funny if their King Arthur kept accidentally helping him.

Page 97 – 101

The librarian is a cameo for my former roommate Stef who was the one that told me the correct dewy decimal number for King Arthur stuff.  Also, I put in this bit to make the connection between Emain Ablach and Avalon but also cause Irish words are hard to spell if you’ve only heard them.

I was careful with Rae’s dialogue here.  Notice she doesn’t let Kimber use any of the books first, she just offers the ones she isn’t immediately using.  She also covers her notes/map as soon Kimber brings up the night before.

They are little hints that Rae is 100%. But Kimber misses it cause she is too busy being impressed by Rae.  I also wanted to build up Kimber’s crush thoughts about Rae over the series. So right now it’s just she’s so cool.

Page 102 – 104

Character’s logic needs to follow a logic, even if it’s not the same as the readers. The toast jelly bit is supposed to be Elsie misheard tots jealy and then justified it to her self why toast jelly makes sense. So Elsie logic.

I had Morgan mockingly ask and prop Kimber about her plans repeatedly to make Kimber more defensive. That way it makes sense when she responses angrily to Elsie asking the same questions sincerely in book 2.

All through this chapter I try to push Kimber as the outsider to Morgan and Elsie who already know each other. Pushing the age difference which a sex joke that goes over Kimber’s head would be a way to do it without resulting to them actively mocking her again.

Page 105 – 108

This whole fight you can see they are attempting teamwork but failing. Like Morgan does pull Kimber out of the way of the falling giant fish.

Page 109 – 114

Morgan is the only one who isn’t immediately on board with Rae.  She’s the one that notice Rae hasn’t put herself at risk. She is also the only one who picked up on Rae’s subtle dig. Sometimes being distrustful and jaded can be good?

Then we see them successfully use teamwork. I had fun drawing these action bits.

Page 115 – 118

Elsie does her victory dance again while Rae is quickly headed out. I like the gesture of Elise putting her arm around Morgan and then getting pushed away.

Rae’s expression as she looks over all of them when Elsie suggests a team up is one of her few slip ups in book 1. There is one other.

The last page here, I use this layout once per book when dealing with Kimber and Rae. This first time it’s happy Kimber watching Rae leave.

This chapter is basically what the original idea for Misfits was. A short story about two jerky magically girls breaking into a gated community and then getting arrested at the end.

Page 41 – 42

This scene wasn’t originally in the book. I added it because my editor told me if I started it on page 43, then the captions wouldn’t be clearly Elsie’s since her and Morgan’s voices are similar. There are slight differences but those weren’t clear in the first few of page 43. Generally Morgan stews on things more. Elsie are more right no thoughts and she doesn’t think as much.

So I used this opportunity to show more of Elsie’s friends and how she fights with them in a similar way to the way she fights with Morgan. I worked very hard on Elsie’s face in page 41 panel 4. I thought doing that over pulling on her face as her hands have run down it would be perfect. There are a lot of dumb photos save on my computer to get it right.

page 43 – 46

I liked the visual of Elsie just climbing out the window. I like how all the action in this scene came out. I wanted to make it be them immaturely hitting each other during all the exposition cause it solidifies their dynamic but also it’s more visually interesting than just talking to Cu. Elsie thinks she wins the bet because she just bet Lin that Morgan won’t do better than her, if both her and Morgan get zeros then they are equal and Elsie wins the bet. Lin definitely doesn’t agree.

page 47 – page 54

Elsie just flopping over is one of my favorite things for her. Her body language is always over dramatic. Those bikes are definitely stolen. You can tell cause they are boy bikes aka there is a high bar which doesn’t let you ride then with a skirt.

My favorite type of humor in comics is when there are similar panels to show a time beat. So Elsie’s Uuuuh… then thinking for two panels is an example of that. I also like how her guesturing came out when she says she is super hot.

I love the idea of the girls wacking their rings to turn them on. I thought it was perfectly in character for Morgan and Elsie. Here I wanted to show Morgan is a bit better at figuring things out than Elsie. She realized her punches had a bit of a kick last time. Plus I got to use the fun super tall and skinny panels again. I also enjoyed playing with the angles of all the shots with Morgan mocking Elsie while sitting on the wall.

I just had a lot of fun drawing them trying to climb up the wall.

page 55 – 57

I mostly wanted to establish some scenery and build a little tension here. It was a lot of fun to draw and block out. I also wanted to show Elsie having a harder time being sneaky since she’s got the big ass hammer to worry about.

The last panel of that last page should have been pulled out maybe a little to stress there are a lot of houses on the grid her. But hey! You can tell which house is Kimber’s.

page 58 – 61

Elsie is not good at stealth. This is also the biggest difference between her captioning a chapter and Morgan. Elsie is basically saying everything she thinks. Morgan is mostly being quiet and leading the way.

page 59 is something I felt would be important. Elsie starts her usual mocking of Morgan. Since usually Morgan takes off. She usually isn’t this close to Morgan as the anger visibly builds up. See that does make Elsie feel bad. I love the first panel of page 60 where Elsie feels bad and Morgan is her usual angry self. Why Morgan struggling to hold Elsie’s hammer I thought came out well that that last tear of panels could have worked better. Elsie is slipping after showing off and holding on 1 handed.

page 62 – 63

I use buttfaces as Kimber’s go to insult because I wanted to ensure that she came off as younger than the rest of the cast. I also don’t have her swear at after this first time. I decided to ditch the bandana after this scene cause it was annoying to draw.

page 64 – 67

I always like drawing stuff that is on fire. It’s fun to play with the lighting.

page 68 – 71

Again this is driving home the point from earlier that Elsie is the one who can make friends. Morgan just attacks Kimber verbally or with her powers but Elsie is the one who tries to reach out.

Page 72

This page is my favorite Misfits of Avalon page. I like doing the trick where the thought captions cover the dialog they aren’t paying attention and I like Elsie’s freak out at learning a dog is talking. I had fun drawing her face a lot during this scene.

Also, this is the first hint of how Cu finds them. He always appears after they say his name.

page 73 – 74

I liked drawing Morgan and Elsie sprawled out on top of each other.

This joke was basically how the original Misfits of Avalon pitch/short would have ended.

page 75 – 78

Billy makes his first appearance to show one of the other big differences between Elsie and Morgan is Elsie has a support system. As soon as Billy shows up I always put Morgan lower in the panel or looked down on her to make her look smaller.

Someone like Elsie is not going to believe in secret identities.

Page 1

This page I wanted to show Morgan dreaming before she even gets the ring. She is the only more connected to everything going on. She’s the Morgan Le Fay of this King Arthur drama. Well, all the girls are a little, but Morgan is most of all. That’s why she’s the only one that wears plaid. The bits of her dream are all hints of what’s to come.

Page 2

You get your intro to Morgan’s world view and why. Since she is an abrasive person, I wanted to explain her as quickly as possible. The apartment is fairly small but covered in empty cans and bottles. Her dad is passed out on the couch. The whole this is something that as a teenager she is powerless to fix. So she gives up.

page 3 – page 4

Morgan’s first interaction with her dad is to reinforce the previous page. If this comic was in color his eyes would be red from his hangover. Her dad is also fairly young. The tiny lines under his eyes, I wanted him to look tired not old. He’s supposed to be 32. It’s not flat out stated until book 2, but I wanted people to be able to connect the dots that he was very young when he and his girlfriend had Morgan. The way they both communicate with each other is to show this is their normal.

Morgan and Elsie’s gang are the only teenagers in the shopping area since they are cutting school. Stealing candy from one of those candy weight displays seemed like a good minor crime to have Morgan do while she thinks no one is paying attention. I figured that would definitely be something she doesn’t think is wrong because it doesn’t “hurt” anyone. Also eating candy gives her something to do with her hands in the next scene.

page 5 – page 8

I like Morgan popping her collar hoping Elsie doesn’t notice her. Elsie is loud and not that bright. So her intro is her laughing loudly on the previous page before shouting at Morgan. Then she can’t think of a come back. I have it as a running bit that Elsie isn’t good at come backs because while I always like snappy dialogue, it’s odd when EVERYONE can be that quick. Especially, when you have a character who isn’t bright in every other instance.

Elsie’s posse are my two friends Amanda LeFranias and Lin Visel.

Every fight I witnessed as a teenager was two girls. I know the stereotype is that girls leave emotional scars when they bully and boys are the ones that leave physical scars. A big part of Misfits of Avalon is to fight against that. I never saw boys get in a fist fight, I only saw girls wail on each other.

Here I wants to show that Elsie and Morgan do have a lot of common ground. Grownups frequently lump them in together. Once they have a common enemy they stop fighting. Elsie lashes out once her offer of friendship is rejected.

page 9 – 11

This is one of the reasons why I wanted the captions to show each girl’s thoughts. Elsie’s insults do get to Morgan but she is so disaffected and misanthropic that it could be easy to miss without her “I totally have friends” caption.

Cu following Morgan was fun to draw. But I wanted to make sure it doesn’t go on too long. So we have Cu following her beat, then a beat of her noticing, then a beat of her trying something new to ditch him. That repeats 3 times. 3 is generally a good number to repeat something, because twice might be an accident and 4 is overdoing it. Page 11 ends on Cu talking finally to be a good beat before the page turn.

page 12 -15

I watched Morgan to at first doubt what is going on because I always liked that when Luna first talks to Usagi that Usagi assumes she is dreaming. Also since Morgan’s always in trouble with someone “I didn’t do it” would be her immediate reaction to ANYONE looking for her. Not just a talking dog. Any in later pages I screw it up but I in this first scene I wanted it to be clear that Cu is very large. Morgan falling on the ground while he snarls at her is to push that.

There are a few places where I sorta wish Misfits of Avalon was in color. Whenever the ring glows is definitely one of them.

I tried to break up all the exposition so there was never one big info dump. So Morgan just leaving mid-explanation was part of that and also shows how little she takes responsibility for things.

The “You– you” is supposed to show how taken aback Cu is by all this. Throughout the whole series I had a little bit of trouble with Cu emoting. I didn’t want him to end up looking like a Disney cartoon dog.

I always like to put little details in the background when I have time. So while Morgan is running away you can see in one panel a dude looking up as an unseen Cu is going over the fence. Then you get hacky sack guys get knocked over. Then we get the everyone trying to grab dog Cu. A lot of this sequence is sorta to show Cu’s size again. It easy when a mascot animal is a cat or mouse sized.

page 15 – 21

With Elsie back in I wanted to reinforce how often her and Morgan end up in the same boat. They are both banned from the movies and Elsie knows Morgan well enough to guess she stole something. I also wanted to push Elsie being friendly with being excited about Morgan shoplifting rather than judgey.

I like how I broke down Cu’s transformation into a human form. I tried to make Cu’s human disguise reflect what he really is. So his collar becomes a belt that gives his silhouette a tail and his hair sticks up to make ears. He also has a goatee and sideburns to reflect where he has a scruffiest fur. And then he has fur lining on his jacket and boots. And to connect him to the girls and magic he’s got plaid on.

Elsie immediately hits on Cu because she basically does whatever she thinks but that gets shown more in her chapter. Also I had to take a bunch of photo reference to get Morgan biting her ring to try and take it off correct.

I intentionally cut the scene here so the monster could get a nice page turn in the book.

Page 22

Big showy reveal here. So all the animals monsters in Misfits of Avalon are animals Arthur turns into in The Sword in the Stone mixed with an elemental power. In this case it’s a badger. Since the girls are in North America I looked up American Badgers and realized they don’t have the distinctive look of the badgers in England. So it’s not immediately obvious they are fighting a badger.

page 23 – page 25

There is a small reference to Clone High in Morgan’s argument with Cu about if she has to help.

For Morgan’s transformation I looked at a bunch of magical girl transformations in manga. Everyone who knows the genre probably thinks to the longer elaborate ones in the anime versions. Usually they are pretty quick in the manga though. So I thought the plaid ribbons would work well for a visual short hand even if the girls are far away from the camera.

Also I really like super tall thin panels. They are hard to find a good place for some times. So I’m glad I could use em here.

I had fun drawing both Elsie and Morgan’s reactions to the guardian outfit.

page 26 – 28

While Morgan and Cu argue some more, I wanted to show why Elsie grabs the ring. No one really commented on it but out of all the girls, Elsie is the one who has friend that we see. There is a reason for that. She might be abrasive but she is like to take care of people she cares about. So Amanda and Lin almost getting hurt by badger monster means it’s time for her to step up.

I love every bit of Elsie on page 27 while she taunts Morgan. Same for the first panel of page 28.

Cu while not human does know how they work and I put this in to show that he immediately zeroes in on Morgan and Elsie’s relationship as a thing to be exploited. It’s also why when he needs to tell them something he always tells Elsie while looking human.

page 29

I love this first panel. I should color it and use it as an ad for the comic.

So a running thing in Misfits of Avalon is the smarter a character is the more they ask questions. Elsie runs in without thinking about what she’ll do. Morgan almost does the same until she sees how badly that is going for Elsie.

Lámh Gaoithe Dubh is Irish Gaelic. All the spells are.

page 30 – 33

When ever I do a fight I try to make sure the characters use the surroundings and aren’t fighting in the void. So I liked coming up with the trying to hit the badger with one of the branches Elsie tripped on.

Morgan of coarse has to give to Elsie as good as she got because they are children.

I liked doing the lighting on the appearance of Elsie’s hammer.

page 34 – 36

As the first book progresses the girls do get better and better at fight depending on their teamwork. Morgan tripping Elsie is supposed to be the very bad start. Winning by accident is the start so that when they aren’t getting in each others way during book 2 there is contrast.

I had fun drawing Elsie’s little victory dance.

page 37 – 40

Cu says it’s a badger repeated hear to make it clear what type of animal they fought. The others are more obvious, so someone could put together the little easter egg if they wanted. But like I said North American Badgers don’t have obvious face lines that badgers in the UK have.

Morgan gets some exposition from Cu and I tried to show off the outside of her house/street a bit.

When Morgan says Cu can’t come up I again wanted to make a point that Cu’s size as a dog limits him/makes him more obvious than say a cat with a moon on it’s head or mouse with wings. So he’ll not be spending lots of times with the girls in the off hours.

That last panel is supposed to mirror the first page while she was dreaming. I thought both would make nice books ends for Morgan’s chapter.