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★ Notes on Year 3, Comics 9 & 10 - Hi, Honey I & II ★
✓ Bitty and Jack are a team. Yes.
✓ Hm, but what if you sprinkled a bit more angst in there…oh! An off-and-on relationship! Or-or-or—maybe Bitty could hold off on another issue that’s bugging him for the next year and a half? No, I got it—Jack ghosts on him. <_<;
✓ With that voicemail Bitty left on Jack’s phone…we don’t get to peek into Bitty’s head very often. Bitty is not only our protagonist, he is our point of view. And unless he tells us how he is feeling—either in a vlog answer or by talking to another character or by breaking the 4th wall and telling us that checks are really really scary—we have to infer. I’ll be honest and say that this has been a huge hurdle for me to jump as a writer, because without decent framing, Bitty cannot tell us anything. So a voicemail isn’t perfect, but because it is a voicemail to his best friend, that space can turn into a confessional.
But that we don’t see a lot of Bitty’s internal monologue is also part of his character. I hope that comes through. Bitty hides so much of himself in order to protect his person, and also because he is much too concerned with taking care of everyone else around him. (Either he doesn’t think his problems are worthy of that much attention or he is distracting himself from his own issues by taking on other people’s concerns.) From feeding his team, to prioritizing his boyfriend’s needs/goals over his own, to his deep devotion to his subscribers, Eric Bittle puts others before himself in a way that would be admirable if it weren’t his only setting.
All of my characters are based off of friends and people I know, so touching on this aspect of his
character is hard! It’s a trait that if left to unchecked can be
destructive. And we all either know someone like this—or we are
that person.
Yikes! Is this a blog post or is this a therapy session??? Gah! You’re right! Less emo more fun facts–Jack’s phone is a Samsung Galaxy! The flag Bitty is standing under is a University of Georgia Athens flag! In 3.9 Bitty crept into his room late because he had been away seeing Jack and knew he had to get back in time for practice! Alice Atley is Bitty’s thesis adviser!! LARDO LOVES BABY DUCKS
✓ Did a pie have to suffer just so this all could happen?THE! PIE! IS! BITTY!!
✓ You’re good at visual parallels!…Or maybe I’m not all that creative and have a very limited set of camera angles in my cinematic toolbelt. B^) YEAAAAHH!!!
✓ What was Chowder typing in the first of these two comics? He was on his laptop while that Sports Guy was talking smack. Chowder was doing some comp sci homework. But he could have been writing SportsTV a strongly worded email?
Hello!! How are you? I hope you’re having a good day!! I’m friends with Jack Zimmermann and he works very hard—so please stop!
✓ Five in the morning? Oh, well. *puts arm behind head XD anime sweating nervous laughter* If Jack and Bitty started their phone conversation really late…and Jack didn’t floor it to get from PVD to SAM (which who are we kidding)…5AM could work. Driving through a big storm…
✓ What was your favorite part of drawing 3.9/3.10? Oh my goodness thank you for asking. Probably putting the finishing touches on each panel and adding rain! A few streaks of white at low opacity and you’ve got a stormy environment! Or a very bedraggled and concerned hockey player.
☆ Up Next: You’ve never had brunch at Jerry’s???
☆ ☆ ☆ NEWS ☆ ☆ ☆
☆ Next batch of updates. I’m a broken record at this point, but the next batch of updates will be in December. I have to focus on getting as much of the Kickstarter done as soon as I can and that will unfortunately take up a lot of time. I beg your patience!
☆ And other than that? Not much! Hey, listen to me. Thank you so much for reading this comic–and for even making it through a blog post. I appreciate (and I’m still somewhat bewildered by the fact) that you care. Thank you!
