Furiously pencilled vertical lines feature permanently on the background of every frame. At first, I wasn't sure how or what to make of it - should I make them lighter so the colours are more visible? Should I ignore them and colour as usual or should I just colour the backgrounds a really dark colour so the characters and foreground stand out? - Just a few of the many questions that plagued me during the project. I made the decision to use really dark colours at the start of the comic - it wasn't a fully formed decision, just one that became a constant. Thankfully, it didn't stay that way.

Instead of ignoring the lines altogether, I decided to work with it; proudly displaying it as the underlying tones of claustrophobia and chaos, imminent throughout the story, almost merging into the characters. Perhaps this was what Jerem intended all along! I toned the reds right down on the main characters and the overall colours are made more subdued, almost dreamlike, with increased layers of brush strokes and filters as if more care was applied to the treatment of both protagonists. I needed to draw the readers into the frame, closer to the conversation that Jim and Jenny were having and hopefully even seeing them as more than characters with sealed fates.

The pages from the second half of the comic took considerably more time to colour than the first half. I spent about an entire day on each page instead of the previous 4 pages a day. It also helped that I had more time to work on the pages as I was right on schedule for the deadlines with days to spare. Hopefully this shows in the coming frames and frames above.

In other news, one of the things I wanted to feature alongside the comic and blog are interesting things on horror that could be shared with anyone reading. Both of these links below are to games that are upcoming and they look rather appetising.




Alien: Isolation looks to me like the people behind it know almost exactly why I love the franchise in the first place - survival sci-fi horror and I hope it plays as well as it looks.




For those of you wanting something more brutal, take a look at The Evil Within, naturally from the creator of Resident Evil.