Swiftly mete, indeed.
– – –
I put together a couple face mask designs based on sarnothi smiles of… varying friendliness. You can see and buy them here on Redbubble.
Today's edition of the Secret Commentary is empty, because Dave failed to come up with something for it.
I guess I’ll be the one to point out the missing text bubble…
Oh lord… ugh. I’ll have to fix it after work. My apologies.
Don’t Stress Dave,
I thought it was intentional; a way to indicate whispering. As if he didn’t want everyone else to know he was administering a punishment, just the one to be punished. Whether for his image or hers, is up for debate.
A speech bubble is missing, making it hard to see, so in case anyone else didn’t notice, Selkie gets no desert tonight. (And thus, JUSTICE)
Thanks for the heads up. Will have to fix it later.
All good. 🙂 Just wanted people to be aware so they don’t miss it like I did the first time around.
Pretty sure that was a deliberate decision not to obscure most of Selkie’s body.
He wants to keep the text at a lower height than Todd’s bubble from the previous panel, and still above Selkie’s response in the following panel, so as not to confuse reading order. So, basically the text can’t be moved much from where it is.
Another rectangular balloon such as has been established for these one-way transmissions from the suit, would pretty much obscure Selkie’s entire body. Not only does it grate for an artist to cover up something he spent time drawing, but in this particular case, Selkie’s body is establishing their position and that they are travelling. If you saw JUST her head facing Todd’s, you might assume she was upright and that they had all stopped moving and were standing still (well, floating in place, whatever).
It’s a small panel, in order to fit within the larger page, and all of this is a series of compromises and tradeoffs to make it work better, if not perfectly.
I have one other method that might improve visibility of the text, though it’s not exactly pretty either: A white outline in the shape of the text, just a couple pixels larger than the black text.
Here it is as a “patch” of the full page, at the same resolution as the web-display version. (Let’s see if these comments allow it to display…)
https://i.imgur.com/4dfPV80.jpg
[img]https://i.imgur.com/4dfPV80.jpg[/img]
(Hino reads the new responses added since he began typing that wall of text)
… Or, I’m apparently wrong and Dave omitted the balloon entirely by accident. 😛
That does not discount the elegance of your solution.
If I’d intended to have the words be out of a proper bubble, the white borders like you’ve done would have absolutely been my go-to solution.
Couple of thoughts on the previous comic.
I first thought Todd was saying that he could not eat right then because if he took off his helmet to eat he would drown.
It suddenly occurred to me Sunday that Todd is a vegetarian, and all of that food with meat. Even if he could have eaten he would not have eaten, so was attempting to politely turn it down.
I noticed that whenever the humans speak there is a ksshk noise. That, I presume, comes from the speaker in their equipment.
But when Todd made the announcement about his flatulence, there was no ksshk. There should have been.
…all of that food WAS meat.
Dam otto korrek two El
The kshh is just the sound of breathing with an air tank. It’s not required in every bubble.
What constitutes desert for selkie? More meat?
Red-wine marinade rare tenderlojn, pureed and pressed into rosettes. Or fish eyes.
Hmm is honey far enough removed from plants, if not then honey bacon!
oOOo or smoked salmon on cream cheese on top of the honey bacon
Apologies for my lack of couth … what are Todd and Selkie quoting in the last panel?
They aren’t quoting anything real-world. I had the general idea of the last panel being Selkie quoting a book she’d read and Todd being amused and low-key proud of it, but I couldn’t find a real-world quote I liked, so I made up something book-y sounding.
You can think of it as being a book that exists in Selkie-canon but not real life.
If she is quoting, should she not be using pluralses?
Only if she was reading it directly. But she’s recalling from memory. That’s just how the brain works.
…You have any idea how many proud nerds you sent rushing to Google trying to find those lines? LOL
The specific lesson Selkie needs to learn here is “When someone is depending on you, DON’T mess them around.”