Grrl Power #86 – OMG It’s… The hell are those?
So here they are. I know after all the buildup the reveal is going to be a letdown to some, but this is what they’ve always been. It’s interesting to finally see them though, even for me – this is basically the first time I’ve ever drawn them. Of course, revealing what they actually do should be fairly amusing, and will happen quickly over the next few pages. Then her meeting the rest of the team, then… arrg, I wish I could draw this thing faster. :P Speaking of which, it’s ridiculous it’s taken this long to get to. 86 pages and a year and a half just to get the tube open? As some of you know, I had Sydney’s powers listed in her bio on the cast page for several months, cause the reveal was always “soon.” Hopefully things will start moving a little faster now, but it’s a balance of getting in those little moments of character development, jokes and keeping the story moving.
This page, being the big reveal, is unfortunately a little short on content and jokes, but we’ll… uh, call that pacing. It would be nice to be able to say I got lots done on the next page since this one didn’t take quite as long to draw, but that didn’t happen. I did get some banners made up that I’ve been meaning to, it occurs to me I should make a page with all that stuff on it in case anyone wants to grab stuff to link back to this page with. That’s another project for the upcoming weeks.
When I drew the tube, I didn’t pay much attention its size, but now looking at the orbs, I’m not sure they would have fit in the thing. There’s 7 of them (hopefully I haven’t forgotten one, hah) and they’re about the size of a tennis or baseball. Each time I draw the tube its size is a bit different though… the version on this page seems especially skinny, but we’ll say they just barely fit.
There were quite a few good ideas bandied about in the comments (lots of really silly ones too of course) but more than one person suggested the tube was full of gaming dice. I really liked that idea. So much so I almost started trying to figure out how I could merge the idea with everything else I had planned – baseball sized dice, one of each kind, etc., but it would have changed things too much. Still, I could easily do a whole other comic around that idea.
Thanks for all the TWC votes guys. Hitting #1 and even holding it for a couple of days isn’t something I thought would ever happen. I thought I’d be at this for years before even getting into the top 100. It’s quite a feat given the sheer number of webcomics out there and the size of their audiences’s. I’m glad you find my daydreams as amusing as I do.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Chakra orbs? Oh, this is gonna be fun/intersting/potentially painful (mentally so for Max, anyway)…
On another subject, spotted a prop error: previous page Sydney tossed the packing foam aside and it isn’t showing on the lid of the tube. This page, it’s resting on the lid.
I’m assuming the one on the lid, along with the one that seems to be bouncing down from the tube, were between the orbs and popped out as they activated and flew out of the tube.
There was a piece of foam between each orb, they’re popping out as they come out of the tube. The one on the lid just lilted over when it came out. The one she threw earlier is down on the floor somewhere.
That are the original christmas balls directly from the north pole.
I just have one burning question at this point – what if there are *more* out there somewhere?
Love the lighting effects btw – the quiet glowing is a nice touch.
Who says there arn’t? They might be trans-dimentional beings on a vacation.
Give the spastic girl powers and see what she does with them.
KEEP US AMUSED!
wtf brain balls?
How long does it take you to complete pages?
Between 10 and 16 hours probably. I’m not a fast artists, and I especially get slowed down on faces, especially Maxima’s. I bang my head against the desk quite a bit trying to make her look like her. I had to draw panel 2 twice cause I didn’t like the way I drew Sydney’s face and I couldn’t figure out why, so I scrapped it and started over. Inking goes pretty quickly, but the coloring takes quite a while. I could save some time by doing flatter color, like cell shading, but I don’t think I’d be happy with the way that’d look.
The art is great. Up there with some of the stuff coming out of Korea.
Keep up the good work, you’ll get faster as you learn how to manupulate the medium over time.
Maby someday you will get some more help besides your wife. Good luck.
You might want to set up a donations page, with posters if they donate 20$ or more.
High praise! I just wish I had a team of Koreans/Magaka to do backgrounds and coloring and all the other stuff that goes into the typical manga these days. I was hoping that I would get faster over time, but as I improve, I find myself spending my time gain on more detail work. Obviously I like the way it looks as I increase the fidelity, but none of that makes the jokes funnier. Eventually I’ll hit a point where I realize that my noodling isn’t helping and move on to the next thing more quickly. That’s the plan anyway.
DaveB have you done created and saved a flashcard with poses, expressions, and close ups of hands/eyes/gear/lips etc for each character yet?
Doing this for reference and to capture special quirks and expressions that you want to associate with each is a quick way to sorta animate the process of drawing the comic. This will let you grab a pose or frame reference and slap on the basic sketches onto the scene and then do details the same way and then work on altering them before you ink. Cut n paste, tweak and alter, add in dialogue, ink and color. Tada… not that that is how it’s done properly, but it is a short cut for scenes with a lot of bodies and faces in it. (learned that trick from an artist who did Swamp Thing in the 80’s) – he didn’t have access to tablets or cut/paste tech on a computer either, but he did have a ton of flash cards for each character with sketches of powers, movement and expressions for quick reference (raw sketches and some inked for final looks of before and after) if he needed it. let him draw raw outlines and label them for his co-artist to fill in using sketch cards for reference to keep it w/his artistic style.
Update that to 21st century tech and you can make this a bit more automated. let’s you build a scene in layers and remove a part if you don’t like the way, say the mouth/lips work in that scene and replace them with another version or change to freehand and try that way.
A little work and making files you can quick drag and drop onto a scene’s picture and then add in the front of the scene you want to do that’s not stored already for the joke/comic to work will speed up your abilities in time. well capabilities at least. Basically you’d be borrowing animation tricks used to change cells a bit by bit and using them in gross panels instead of cell by cell.
B
I do plan on doing reference pages for each of the characters at some point. The cast page needs a big revision, so they’ll probably wind up there.
You take what time you need to get it right. We want quality not quantity. Now you could speed it up if go to monochrome but I’m use to full color now. I love Sydney’s faces in this today! I book marked this page.
Man, I feel like doing some whisking now. Those are pretty freaking sweet.
max “can I get a spatula?”
arianna “a spatula? why?”
max “I promised no whisking but they are that sweet, so as an alternate spatula.”
syd “told ya so”
Why do I have this image in my head, of Sydney holding one ball with her teeth or even one on each cheek like a squirrel?
One thing to point out: on Gwens bio page I think you meant to say she has ‘spells’, not ‘spels’. That could be funny, a dyslexic mage.
It’d be quite amusing if the packing material was also floating around her. The mystic seven and the odd one out. Wonder if they all have a range limitation from her or just one of them, I suspect all of them.
What happens when somebody tries to grab/touch one of the balls? Do they get zapped? Maybe the ball starts shaking whoever it is until released? If they can shake a normal person, what happens if it is somebody strong like… say Maxima/Anvil?
I’m sure we’ll find out soon.
Great, Now I have an image of Anvil being slung over Syd’s head repeatedly like in those old Tom and Jerry cartoons.
aw man that would be great
That’d be a great Vote Incentive at least! Yes?
They could be ion stones… or did someone else already say that?
Eh? Why would their electrical charge affect…OH, you mean “Ioun” Stones….
You never heard of Ion stones? They remove static cling (yes yes I misspelled it earlier)
I love her expression when they pop out. Its all ” So is this too cool or what?”
So shes powered by….. Dragon Balls? ;P
So are those the seven elemental stones of circling your head and taking no bad mouthing from apprentice mages?
Air, Earth, Fire, Metal, Water, Wood and Void?
Or are they the multi-coloured marbles of the gods and Sydney is their dedicated caddie sorry handler?
Of course now she’s unveiled them what is the cthulhu expert going to say?
Be disappointed or as perplexed as the others?
I was thinking they were elemental stones, as well
My first thought was Dragon Balls as well…and then Ioun stones. :D
I’m reminded of the Neopets game Fairie Bubbles…
The next thought was Pokeballs or Squikie (however they’re spelled) toys. But I do like the Ioun Stone reference as that’s what they effectively do.
And yes, after all this time and build up, it’s a let down on what they look like. Now, show us the kewl powerz!
whatever it is, it’s awesome.
I think that each one of those things can posses her and change her into something else. Like the red one goes all immolation shape shifting. haha
I’m actually quite surprised with her background of being a nerd and the look and style of the orbs that nobody’s just shouted out materia yet. So I shall be the first.
Oh . . . yeah . . . wow. I can’t believe no one has thought of that until now, including me.
Yeah, I definitely thought of Materia first. 7 of them should make her pretty powerful.
So she does have tennis balls in the canister. Just that they’re glowing and may be made out of glass.
I KNEW IT!
I do remember reading Sydney’s Bio before it changed
I’d tell you but, that would be spoilers :-P
I remember reading it too, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t cover the shininess of the objects
Hey those look cool!
With regards to the spacing issue, they are floating against gravity, they could just have some extradimensional properties to go along with it. They fit “somehow”. :-) Either way, works for me. Looking forward to seeing what they do.
The tube isn’t long enough for a straight stack, but it is wide enough for an offset stack. Translation for the spatially challenged: they fit if you pack them right. No problem.
Puzzle Bubble anyone? :D
I’m looking at the last frame again, and there is a slightly brighter spot in the middle of the picture.
Sort of like an invisible orb.
if you look on the left of the last panel you can see the purple and orangish glow, as well as her hair slightly brighter on top, so what you are talking about is just the glow of the dark bluish orb on the door
Your probably right.
But it would be cool to have a invisible ball that gave Sydney the power of invisibility.
Except she’d never be able to find it.
I have to agree with Elodia7…They look great! I especially liket that they appear to have ‘something’ inside them. Obvious yet mysterious.
I have enjoyed catching up on this story since a friend recomended it. Keep up the good ( and funny) work!
Insert dragonball joke here
Very cool! Still, seeing them is only half the reveal though; I can’t wait to see the powers in action!
I wouldn’t worry that it’s taken 86 pages to get to the reveal. If this was a daily comic the pace would be brilliant, plenty of exposition, good character development, just the right balance of mystery and suspense. Anyone catching up at this point is in for a real treat.
That it has taken a year and a half is a matter of expediency. As a reader I wouldn’t want the comic to be compromised or the quality of the art to drop in order for the story to be told faster, so this is just how it is.
Keep up the good work. I really love what you do and how you do it (though I am less fond of the expletives – the funny ones OK, but just raw swearing…)
Thanks! I wasn’t really sure what to do with the expletives at first, but I eventually decided that censoring them (which can be funnier than not censoring if done right) would make me feel like I was running to the middle a little too much. Basically I wanted the characters to talk like people talk. I’ve never been in a group of 20-30 somethings (outside of work or whatever) where people didn’t casually drop f-bombs and worse, and cast mostly comprised of military folks and nerds wouldn’t read right if they said stuff like what you get in “comics code” books.
Hello, super help service, how can I help you?
My mystic spheres aren’t working
Have you tried poking them?
One mo…. Ah! Yep they’re working now!
Got a giggle out of me. Great stuff!!
Had a district manager calling tech support because her laptop went black. I held the power button for 10 seconds and saved her an embarrassing conversation. She thought I was being a smartass.
Bloody Materia (likely what she was thinking of if she didn’t know what two of them did,) yellow = command, red = summon, green= magics, blue = abilities, purple = stats.Other two potential uses: purple (with shoelaces in middle) fusion and orange is the one that wakes them up/puts them to sleep (based on that effect having an orange tint).
Alternatively similar to that Seven Eyes spell and each orb does 2 things, or more, depending on how each is used.
OMG!!! run its the killer flying spheres from the movie Phantasm.
They are the Testicles of Chuthlu, and bestow the full powers of the Necronomicon upon their possessor. The ToC are not to ever be confused with Rocky Mountain Oysters, side effects of eating a ToC are nausea, cramping, headaches, swelling of…anything, internal bleeding, bleeding from the eyes, bleeding from the rectum, bleeding from the ears, nose, surface of the skin, pain, pain, oh the horrible, horrible, mind bending pain, how am I insane and still coherent, make the tentacles shredding my internal organs into sausages with my own intestines, and cooking them in my brain pan stop… ToC has not be approved by the FDA, the CDC, the DOD, the ASPCA, or the YMCA.
But, they do give their vic- sorry bearer limited imortality.
So they can enjoy the power of the ToC forever.
Masocist would love it.
“It’s happy. It’s fun. It’s Happy Fun Ball [tm]!!”
If Happy Fun Ball should break, do not taste, touch, or look directly at the contents of Happy Fun Ball.
should we be worried that one of them appears to be slightly cracked?
I believe those aren’t cracks but something with in the orb it self
That’s the Lightning Stone.
Oh look aggie’s of doom. Cosmic marbles as for the elements they are Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Spirit, Void, Life and Death. Void and Spirit are two different things put I don’t think these channel the elements,
While you say in the comments that they’re supposed to be tennis ball sized, unless her hands are absolutely huge they’re not really that big. A standard tennis ball is 2.67″, but those balls look closer to 2″. And the tube you have on this page has a height of 4x the diameter of the ball coming out of it, though it’s at an angle; still, it would be tough to fit seven balls in it.
Well I do draw girls’ hands pretty huge. :P
Just looks like a perspective drawing to me.
Her hand is closer to the viewer so it looks larger.
I have to agree with Vanners: I love the story, I love the comedy, I even love the buildup to this moment. I think it’s comedic that she built it up so much to the staff in the room and then they’re like, “What?” I never read the bio page when her abilities were up, but I’ve been following since page 4 and I have to give Dave MASSIVE credit for doing what he loves and sharing it with all of us for over a year straight now.
Kudos oh fearless comic creator.
I will accept that credit and cash it in for doubloons.
My first thought is that Sydney has more balls than anyone else in the room. :p
OMG found the 7 Dragon Balls \o/
OK just kidding here (I hope you guys know the manga Dragon Ball, right?). Awesome page and as stated earlier, I can’t wait to see what powers these things have, and HOW THE HELL did Sydney get a hold on these?? :)
most know the dragonball z anime
Incidentally, we can speculate on her powers from the cast page. She has:
4 dots in a wing icon. It’s probably flight; both Max and Heatwave have that icon and also that power.
3 dots in a sun icon. That’s probably ranged blast powers; Max, Dabbler, and Heatwave have the same icon, and both Max and Heatwave are listed as having energy beams.
5 dots in a circle with a dark middle. Unclear what that is, only Dabbler has the same icon.
2 dots in a symbol of human = human. Only Harem has that power; it’s probably teleportation, since the three humans is probably duplication and anvil has both the fist and the biceps and can’t teleport that we know of.
3 dots in a symbol that looks vaguely like a weight; unclear what that is, no-one else has it.
I’m going to guess at illusions or invisibility for the first power, create object or density control for the second.
The one you couldn’t figure out is likely to be aura projection of some sort as that’s one of the few powers heatwave has that isn’t represented by the other symbols.
I assume that aura projection is the sun with a dark hole in the middle, since Heatwave has three powers (fly, heat beams, aura projection) and three icons. Syd/Halo doesn’t have that icon. Known powers:
Max: strength, speed, armor, flight, energy beams. We’ll map as bicep, winged foot, shield, wings, sun.
Syd: as noted.
Dabbler: too unclear to identify, though I’m guessing the brain icon is super-intelligence and the fist icon here represents martial arts.
Anvil: strength, absorption, physical attack. Map as bicep, inward arrows (unique to her), fist.
Harem: duplication, teleportation, enhanced strength, martial arts. Map as three people, person=person, bicep, fist.
Heatwave: heat beams, flight, aura. Map to sun, wings, sun with hole in center.
In order:
Wing: Flight
Shield: Durability
Bicep: Super Strength
Sunburst: Ranged Energy Blast
Boot: Super Speed
Transparent Circle: Force Fields
Two People: Teleportation
Weight: Telekinesis
Fist: Martial Arts
Light Bulb: Gadgeteering
Crosshair: Marksman
Brain: Super Intelligence
Four Arrows: Energy Absorption
Three People: Clones
Sun with Hole in it: Aura Projection
Am I right David?
Yeah that’s basically it. I do want to revisit the icons. The lightbulb is supposed to be super intelligence if I recall correctly, but those people are usually gageteers anyway.
Does that mean Sydney can fly?
Yep.
All hail the Cosmic Marbles!
It was the general consensus of my gaming group that they would be something akin to join stones.
Reasoning: it would need to necessitate the name halo. The tube was long and skinny and could hold multiple relatively small objects stacked. This was reinforced when third person plural pronouns were used to describe he contents thus casting into doubt out the other leading hypothesis that what ever was in there transformed her into a costume that was either reminiscent of an angel or a particular video game.
I seriously thought they might be a pair of semi-sentient wings – hence the “they” and “asleep”, as well as the angel motif.