I do love my transition lines, which I often have spanning from the end of one scene to the beginning of the next. But in this case, I left it as a soft transition that I’m not necessarily trying to hit too hard. Basically, the previous page ended with Hiura wanting to sneak by the Tet’Sali armada, saying, “This is NOT something we want to engage in.” That then leads to this scene that focuses on Roka trying to make his own decision on when to get involved with something.
I’d like to say it was intentional, but I happened upon a happy accident here. I always planned for Roka to just be drinking alone in his room and mulling over his options before thinking about his pilot friends and their mantra from Chapter 1. But I didn’t really write for anything in particular to jog his thoughts back to his pilot friends. As it turned out, the shot glass ended up really helping there in that it made sense that the shot would make him think back to the pilots toasting to the mantra. So that worked out quite nicely!
Nice pacing. Good moment!
Would it have been too much if his his old crew were reflected in the window of the second last panel?
Thanks! And interesting idea about the pilot reflection. I do think that could have worked and might’ve been a good visual reminder of where that quote came from. As I did it, I wanted the planet to be what Roka is looking at, knowing Sky and Jayd are down there somewhere as he’s mulling things over. I think the reflection would take away from that, but I do think either would’ve worked. I am trying to remind myself in these instances that I can also include previous panels themselves as a visual reminder of past events. I’m actually penciling a page now that does that. So instead of characters just talking about a past event, I can show an image of that event, with the dialogue as caption boxes over it.
Got to love when the washout applies to the ideals of the force better than those that remained in it do.