#iacar

Aaaaand 1/2 of today's update pages is online! We have a new page of Wurr!

On one hand I don't want to make statements of how to read the comic (and some things I prefer to leave up for interpretation) but I should probably emphasize this in-comic as well in the future, as it is kinda important for Surama's character.

You can see how Surama feels about leaders in general. In her own words, they are the rock the rest of the pack should be able to stand on. People they can trust, who support and protect their pack. Not necessarily in a "will physically fight threats" way, but like "make decisions that benefit the pack and keep it safe" way. To Surama, every pack should have that.

The hounds in the Crater have these "leaders' rules" that state that packs should have leader pair, like symbolic "mother" and "father" in a way, so everyone can have someone they can count on and trust. Hound culture isn't gender segregated, but having more than one leader figure helps more voices to be heard, more points of view covered

And Surama had Nightclaw, who she could trust to make the best decisions, to keep them safe. After Nightclaw died, she was left with Iacar as the only option, and, well. I hope the comic makes it easy to tell how Surama feels about Iacar and his decision making.

Couple quick Iacars to test out the Copic shading idea. It's my sketchbook instead of the actual comic paper, but it gives the idea.

First Iacar is just Micron outline with pencil shading, just like in the comic, the second Iacar has Micron lineart with Copic base shade with pencil on top of it.

On one hand, shading every character twice, first with Copic and again with pencil is extra work. But on the other hand I didn't need to press the pencil nearly as hard to achieve the fur effect+dark shade, which was nice for my hand, and also didn't wear down the pencil tip as bad either, so I wouldn't need to sharpen them quite as often. Like, specially that shadowy hind leg. With just pencil alone I had to press so much harder, and the pencil tip was pretty much eaten up by the end, losing the texture. Which is pretty much the all of Surama. Oh, gosh, the amount of Surama I could save with this.

Feeling better today, so I went out for groceries (tried to find this seasonal bun called laskiaispulla, but couldn't find one in the nearest place so I settled for another sweet thingy with whipped cream)

For popular demand (one person a while ago), a partial family portrait of Iacar! From left to right, his brother Dajamos, sister Wroka, Iacar himself, and aunt Crom.