Jeremy: I have been doing a lot of reading recently on the topic of comic making (since I pretty much just jumped in and winged it over a year ago when Jeff and I started the Ouro Bros.), and one thing that I really paid attention to in this particular strip was trying to place the characters in an environment, rather than having the talking heads/bodies in the foreground, with a separate background as an afterthought. Not that I don’t feel I have successfully achieved a setting in past comics, just that the characters were sort of “pasted” in front of a scene. With some new angles/shots implemented in today’s strip, I feel like I placed the characters in a world with actual depth and perspective. They are one part of a visual environment, yet the focus is still on the speakers.

Jeff: And thusly, we bid adieu to you and you and you-ou… no, I mean to 2011. It’s been a great year for both us and the Bros, and we thank you, our readers, for coming along for the tour. We’ve got some really cool plans in place for where the boys are heading next, and we can’t wait to show you! …But we will. ‘Cause that’s kinda the nature of time passing: Cool stuff happened before, cool stuff will happen again, and in the meantime, deal with the cool stuff of the present!

Jeremy: Wow, Jeff. That’s like, super deep and things. You’re like some kind of smart, skinny old man on a mountaintop. Speaking of dealing with the cool stuff of the present, I forgot to mention that I recently won a blog comment contest drawing over at Shadowbinders, a long form webcomic about air travelers in a kind of steampunk dimension, and a criss-cross into the life of a character living in the “real” world. As the lucky winner of the drawing, it earned me a cameo as a pirate in the comic. See if you can tell which one is me. And read Shadowbinders from the beginning, while you’re at it!

Added 12/31/11 “Behind the Scenes”:

Jeremy: Matt’s comment below inspired me to create this addendum to the blog for this comic. Just to show you all an exercise in toning down the sketch a little bit for the final product, here is what I originally did in pencils. After discussing with Jeff, we decided that the final result didn’t need to look quite so zombie-like. But here for your viewing pleasure is a sketch that could have turned into a much more undead version of the final panel.