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Some words about 'Spider-Gwen: Thot-Spider'
🕑 Added 2022-08-27 01:50:02 +0000 UTCJust to be clear, lots of SPOILERS AHEAD.
So if you haven't read this one, go check it out first and then come back here later.
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There you go! Another comic is out and un-delayed. I hope you all enjoyed this latest release at least half as much as I enjoyed working on it.
I promised I'd start giving a bit more content to the +PLUS patrons, so let me start by talking about how this comic came to be.
This one had a very unusual development process, so I'll just share some words about how this slick comic came into existence, thanks to the brilliant talent and joint efforts from Team Lady Valiant, GarthFT, D R Silva and well... myself.
It all started when I was approached by Team Lady Valiant with a collaboration idea. We had already co-produced a couple other projects before (Lewd Hijack and Sugah Coated), but this time they suggested we'd work on something they had in their own commissions vault.
You see, one of the rewards for their Patreon campaign is short commissions of body-swapping stories, which at some extent are very much like the ones I make.
But most of them don't have dialogue and are inked-pages only, so I the idea was that I'd maybe add my writing/editorial skill to further amp them into a more polished material.
So, I picked one of their latest projects, which was a 10-pages long story about a random guy mind-heisting himself into Spider-Gwen's figure.
GarthFT's inked art for that story was amazing, but the narrative aspect of it wasn't really developed.
But there was potential, so we got into the following agreement: We'd have GarthFT produce two more pages of art for the story and a cover. I felt that would round the narrative a bit more to what I'd feel comfortable with. And for that, I'd develop the dialogue and arrange with a colorist to render further life into it.
So I wrote what became pages 01 and 07 of the comic. The random guy became the infamous Bodega Bandit (which if you're not familiar with, is indeed one of the most signature foes of Spider-Gwen). Here's an official page of his lore from canon comics:
You'll notice I ended up using part of that lore in the intro page of the comic.
Actually, I ended up doing a lot more than writing and lettering it.
GarthFT's arrangement with TLV for the cover was for a very simplistic artwork. Just Gwen next to a mirror, while her reflection looked back to her with some evident concern.
It was a nice concept, but I suggested that if there could be a bit more of scenery, the cover could tell a bit more of what the comic was about. Unfortunately that would require more from Garth's time and need more financial investment than we had available, so I asked them if I could play with the art a little bit a make a "bootleg variant" of sorts, using some assets from the inner pages of the comic.
Well, this was the result:
Every detail in the background of the image was edited into it by me. I also tweaked a sneaky little detail in Gwen's figure too. Turns out both Garth and TLV were quite happy with the results so we decided we'd run both versions as variants.
As for the coloring works. D R Silva is on his way to become an amazing colorist, but he's still developing his skills. The artist who was supposed to color this story was Latrell, but fate took him away from us in his prime. Latrell was a mainstream colorist, working in many of the big titles for the larger publisher house you can think of. I won't write his name here, but if you follow recent comics and do the math, you know who he was.
So, D R Silva respectfully took over the project. He's excellent with rendering characters and scenarios, but he's still sort of a beginner in his scenery lighting and ambience skills. Hi work is very competent, but I wanted to take the visuals in the story a bit further.
Which is why I took the job myself of bringing a more vibrant aura to this story. Now, I'm no professional, but I think I did a pretty neat work on this.
So here's a comparison of Silva's renders 01 and 07, then my pass on those, and finally the final lettered version that was used in the comic.
I added barely no extra elements except layers of textures and Photoshop filters, but it did make a remarkable difference, didn't it?
How about these other two pages?
The goal there was always to bring more ambiance to the story, help the visuals convey more narrative and (obviously) make everything bloom with life.
In page 06, the diffraction effect was put there to bring an atmosphere of surreality while the character has their first climatic peak in a female's body. I also added a small "wetness" to the art there, to emphasize the event.
As for page 08, I felt the room needed more of a gamer-girl setup and lighting mood. So I played with shadows and colors of the room (while not forgetting about those salacious dragonhoods on display, in the background).
In general, I feel I may have overdone it a bit, I am aware of that.
But people say the only way to master something is to practice, so I will hopefully become better at it in the future. And it's okay if you think I didn't do such a great job... I understand.
I'm just working my way into becoming better at it.
You may notice that this particular arrangement with Team Lady Valiant ended up bringing some particular aspects to this story.
For one, it is 50% longer than my usual stories, because the costs for it ended up being split between our both campaigns. Another aspect is that, despite the intense lewdness in the story, there's no explicit activity in it. Actually, there's not even penetrætion, except for the adorable pin-up art at the end.
...And that guys, was the story of how you got this comic today.
It's just one of those special circumstances that bring a comic so different than what I usually produce, that it's hard to even compare it to any other. In the end I just hope you enjoyed reading it.
Feel free to use our Discord channel to ask more questions and share your thoughts on this comic (or any other comic of mine, while you're at it).
I'll try to do these little behind-the-scenes thing more often, whenever I get a break from working on the comics themselves.
Now, onto the next release!
Concealed Gunnads, coming next Friday.
Talk soon!
-Tracy.
