If you vote at TWC today, you can see a panel from tomorrow's comic! Yay :). Elias doesn't like breaking bad news :(. I mean, no one does, but especially when you're a certified people pleaser, it's like, extra difficult. But in the process, at least he makes cute faces. Cute faces that were VERY HARD TO DRAW. I'm at that point where I can feel that I'm getting a skill bump again, but that means that I see more problems then I previously did, which means it takes me twice as long to freaking draw things because I endlessly fix them. ENDLESS. The pay off is that I'm much happier with how things are turning out, so I guess that works. I will endeavor to never have to draw seven people in one frame ever again. I spent some extra time fighting with color on this page, and I think it paid off. (The room is supposed to be green. The walls are in fact green.) I reduced the palette to three main colors straight off the color wheel, yellow-green, orange, and purple-blue (indigo? but not really), and then derived all the colors from there. Kind of tough, because that's a lot of people wearing a lot of different colors, but I think it gelled in the end. Color harmony is hard when it's not just one panel but a whole page. In life news...it has been a shit week, friends. I think the shooting in Orlando has taken a lot out of my mental health the last few days. I keep seeing cutesy tribute artwork on tumblr, which I appreciate the sentiments of, and I don't begrudge anyone using art to help heal themselves, but man...I'm still too angry to look at shit about togetherness, love, and positivity. Just let me be pissed off. Let me be angry for awhile. I just want people to be safe. Guns don't make me feel safe, they just scare the shit out of me. And this nonsense will just keep happening. I've been thinking a lot about how hard it is to change as you get older. I think when you first walk out into the adult world, you finally have to face...all of it. All at once, for the most part. Oh hey, there's a big world out there! There are other countries, and other religions, and other views, and other races, and other sexualities! SO MANY THINGS. Gradually, you get a bit older, and it's just overwhelming. This big world with all its problems gets overwhelming, so you pull in little by little. "Oh, it's sad this event happened, but it won't happen to me." You make your world smaller and smaller, you stop looking for new things and new ideas, and you desperately try and create consistency in a culture that will change decade by decade, sometimes even faster, because you're already behind as it is. Plus, it's nice to feel like you've got everything figured out, even if all you understand is the one little section of the universe that you've carved out for yourself. So then, when someone comes at you with something different, a different idea or a different religion or a different way of living in general, that creates a little crack in the world you've secured for yourself. So you think, "this doesn't fit with the world I've created." Therefore, this new thing must be wrong. You've got everything figured out, so this new thing must be wrong. And I get it. I've got my little plot of land that I cling to. This is where things make sense for me. This is where my roses grow and my cats live and my dog sleeps. I get pissy when the grass has to be cut. But grass gets taller because it must. Times change. Culture and people get weirder and harder to understand. But maybe as things get weirder, they get a little closer to being reality, and farther away from being something we construct to make us feel less overwhelmed. Okay, that's been today's deep thoughts. I gotta go eat a bagel. See you tomorrow!