The Making of ‘Space Penguin : Holding Out’.
So, I meant to do this a lot closer to when the actual comic came out, but...I was kinda disappointed in the response upon posting...so...my enthusiasm to talk about the comic beyond that kinda drained, but...I’m going to post the rough version, and talk a little about it anyway. So here goes.
Basically, the aim of this 5 page surprise mini-comic...thing was to accomplish three goals...the first was to 1up 2014′s mini-comic, moving from 3 pages to 5, and having a lot more action/narrative that the previous one did. The second goal was to properly introduce the character of Finch prior to his role in #1, and the third reason was to get my ass in gear and not only bulk-create a lot of Space Penguin pages, but also release some content after literally a year without anything new. The aim was to spend the whole month of December up to the Christmas period working on it, and then post it on Christmas Eve as a ‘present’ for people, y’know, like a narcissistic bitch. In the end, I rough planned the whole comic out in one night (As can be seen above), and then fumbled around and made the actual 5 pages of comic across a period of two weeks...making two pages in one night, had a gap, then two on another night, and then finishing on the 3rd night after, before posting it the following afternoon, on the 23rd. It got a bit close, yeah, but...making something this varied and largely scoped in panels in that short a space of time was super fulfilling in terms of my hopes of actually finishing #1 in the coming months.
In terms of changes between the rough plan and the final version, there wasn’t too many, and none of them were visually based, instead being tweaks/changes to dialogue that was sloppily written across one evening, and then rewritten as I made the finished product. The dialogue mainly remained the same, I just altered the text layout, and often the phrasing of certain things here and there to make it flow better. And I actually reused the same sentence twice across two pages, so...that had to be changed as well. Oopsy. Other than that? The only major alteration was in the final panel, where instead of turning his head and going HOLY SHIT, cutting off his dramatic monologue with surprise at SPs appearance, he just says..the thing he says in the final comic. That’s both because I was lazy and didn’t want to draw a new head for him, but also to make the ending of the comic less abrupt. But mainly laziness. As you can see, not a huge amount was changed, and nothing significant was cut, which is pretty rare for me making stuff...especially when I’m working to a self-planned deadline. Previous Issues of Space Penguin had a lot of things cut due to level of ambition and the time/ability it’d take to make them happen...and this time I didn’t want to do that. So I didn’t. Gooooooo me.
The basic idea for the comic was to show Finch following Space Penguin across the galaxy on his various exploits, a total of 7 different ‘locations’ were featured, the main ‘Red Moon’ adjacent city from the opening, the unknown locations of the nightclub and dark office (Although I’d safely say they were both on different planets), the latter of which features a semi-return of the space wolves from old SP #4, and the former introducing a random alien race in the poorly drawn guy getting the shit beaten out of him. Then there are 3 different regions of space ‘The Emperor’, Space Penguin’s ship is seen flying through...before the final location, the glass domed colony at the bottom of that page (from the outside), and on the final page (from the inside), which has greater significance to SP#1 and the potential comics beyond that, and is the point at which Finch and SP finally cross paths, this mini-comic’s final page taking place mid-way into #1, SP’s line of dialogue in fact taken straight out of that issue, so that’ll be pretty neat whenever you get to read #1 I guess. WOO.
There aren’t too many easter eggs and little things hidden here and there in this comic, mainly because there wasn’t really much space for them, and not much time to spend on background details that may go unnoticed anyway. The point of the red moon was to make the connection that it wasn’t set on Earth, and...yeah, it should have blown up at some point, but there was noooo tiiiiime for that. The object Space Penguin is holding in the explosion is a folder containing documents and stuff...that, paired with his line on the final page are meant to be a little...something, which will make more sense by #1. The final location of the comic, along with ‘S.os’, Finch’s phone based invention are both featured, and explained more in #1. There’s one other little detail that will have probably gone unnoticed due to the lack of available context for anyone but me, but...needless to say that detail has a wider significance on #1...and in fact the previous Christmas comic, and if you can guess what it is, I won’t confirm or deny it, but that’d be pretty neat. You won’t though.
ALRIGHTY, that’s a look at the rough plan, and then the making of my little Christmas mini-comic nobody read. If you read that, and then this...then thank you! I’d love to know your thoughts, why not let me know, either via the adjacent ASK button, of which no Tumblr account is needed...or on Twitter, or whatever. I just want some feedback, that’d be swell. Space Penguin #1 is still in the works, with Space Penguin #2 being roughly detailed to make the potential gap between issues less stupidly long..so...I’ll keep you posted, and until then, LATER GATORS.
