Artist confessions: in my original plan I was going to do this whole section of the chapter from page 347 onwards with all the characters fully kitted out in their emergency suits, helmets and all. But then I chickened out and decided they could just have their helmets at the ready (which in the case of the basic emergency suits, like the one Fusella is wearing, has a sort of soft-sided helmet attached, looking like a hoodie). Pages and pages of people in helmets with very little to distinguish between them would get dull pretty fast. The price of a visual medium, I guess!
Re: the final panel. The transparent doors are already shut (see panel 4). Is that an extra opaque blast door closing from above?
Interesting. I had assumed it was two halves of a door coming together from either side. This assumption was based on the big vertical line down the middle of the closed door (though it is missing on the window above). However, the lines along the bottom of the door could be motion lines, indicating a solid door coming from above. Tara?
Tara, IMO it would not be impossible to avoid getting dull even with everybody fully suited up. It would just be incredibly hard.
Instead of showing a room with robot-like people in it, one could use POV shots through the helmets, show digital display overlays, etc. Movies or TV shows sometimes do this very effectively, but of course they have the added audio dimension, and can combine claustrophobic framing with exasperated breathing. An example of a webcomic character shown with helmet only but incredibly expressive is from Dressed for Success.
This would of course require a somewhat different art approach. And while I’m perfectly sure you could have pulled that off with some considerable effort, I’m so happy that you rather spent that effort to keep your schedule. Good choice.
I am becoming more amazed by the month at the sophistication going into Fictional User Interface design these days. A long way since Star Trek: TNG‘s backlit Okudagrams…
Here is the broken link for Bonne Fete from Dressed For Success:
http://egestacomics.com/2012/03/14/dressed-for-success-page-119/
I think you wanted the previous page: http://egestacomics.com/2012/03/07/dressed-for-success-page-118/
Don’t do it Tara, it’s a pain in the patootie to do.
Here’s some examples of FUI for examples and inspiration.
I think the problem wouldn’t even be ‘dull’ so much as ‘harder to follow.’ In a graphic novel, I appreciate the visual cues. The text-cues you’d need to do the same thing would gunk it up. Easier to just see the hair and faces!
You could always have people’s last names stamped on the suits. Apparently it works for sportsball players.
That said, if you can give me enough of a hook on which to hang a little suspension if disbelief, I’ll take the ability to see people’s faces any day. To that end, it might not have been a bad idea to wait until the blast door was shut and then have people take the helmets off, but it works fine as it is. I wouldn’t have given it another thought if you hadn’t mentioned it.
You could do like in the movies where everyone has an incredibly bright light inside their helmet pointed right at their eyes.
They wouldn’t be able to see a thing, but we’d be able to see them.
Good point. Personally, I like Tara’s use of artistic license better.
BTW, why do I have a hunch that Mr. Caelo will play a vital role at some point down the road? Of course, it’s great to save him, but it might be even better for the plot if he’s the key guy at a crucial point.
Well it might not have been that difficult if a few things were different from the beginning, like their pressure suits (instead of being all the same) with various designs and different armor and utility depending on the wearer and their job. They’re worse than shoes to fit to the person’s body, so there would be some unique characteristics to each to start with, because that would be that person’s suit, and not anybody else’s. I’d expect to see old suits and new suits because they’re always in some budget crunch, even suits with signs of wear and repairs. People like Zan, that technician would have big pockets and a utility belt with all sorts of gizmos hanging from it, and lights and optical devices on his helmet. They’d all have bright colors and different combinations with big numbers and letters to tell them apart at a distance with left/right-front/back definition at a glance, not little name tags unless they generated RFID and they could all “see” that information in their helmet visor display.
The people from Engineering would have red and white suits, Technicians would have blue/yellow or blue/red, Security black/white with orange stripes & flashing lights, etc. and so on. You could actually have a field day with that concept and it wouldn’t be hard to tell them apart at all, because they would have the same problem if they all wore the same suits: nobody would be able to tell who was who.
I agree that the people in this universe would have the same problem as the audience does in telling people apart. As such, they would have to have some method of easily telling them apart.
Is there any reason the “hoodie-helmet” couldn’t be transparent all around? That would allow them to be covered and yet still see their heads.
Also: why are the faceplates opaque on the hard helmets? We’ve seen through them before, if memory serves.
The regulations might allow a lot of variation in their appearance using covers on the outside of the suits, but probably NO CRAZY HATS!!!!
The suits could have an LED patch that lit up with the person’s name and rank. And since each person grabbed an emergency suit, not “his e-suit” or “her e-suit” then I assume the hazard suits are self-changing in form to fit the wearer, up to a certain amount of deformation. This is the future, after all.
Good ideas! The wearer transforms his or her suit to display the external identity. Suits in several basic sizes from short to extra-tall. LEDs would really work!
Ooh, good point. They are emergency suits, so they’re probably designed to be as one-size-fits-all as possible, like life jackets.