As I mentioned in the previous commentary, the laser bar spacing can be tricky. I’m especially happy with how panel 1 turned out, with both Maeki and Hiura having their faces visible, as well as Hiura’s hand on her gun.
In earlier chapters that take place in the hold, I penciled and inked the pages and figured out the spacing of the laser bars at the coloring stage. Sometimes that became difficult to accommodate, without having given it thought beforehand. This time around, I actually included the bars at the penciling stage, so I knew exactly how to compose the characters in relation to them to achieve the best result.
This page and the next page were also pretty tough to thumbnail. There are a lot of long, intense moments and I wanted it to feel a bit drawn out. So I wanted to make sure I had enough panels to convey the amount of time passing. But it was tough figuring out who to cut to, what to show, and in what order to do all that to really convey the moment. As with action scenes, I could easily have included many more panels, but ultimately, it’s a trade-off between conveying the beat and not making too much extra work for myself with additional art.
I think you captured the moment very well. The intensity of Hiura, Azarek realizing he’s pushed it too far and Maeki caught in the middle.
Still, was Azarek pushing just to be a jerk or is this the incident that he needs? Since the Snow Job I feel like sudden violent moments are to be expected.
Are we sure that’s going to be a stun blast? You may want to rethink how long a “nap” you want. Forever is a rather long nap time.