I previously mentioned the glass ceiling last page being inspired by Nishiki Market in Japan, but actually this entire space station interior was inspired by the many indoor markets in Japan. Although the ones in Japan were obviously much nicer! I just really liked the look of lots of vendors and stalls lined up next to each other selling their wares and food items.
In this whole space station sequence, I did a lot of color tweaking after I got the pages back from Cyril, one of my colorists. It’s not at all that he did a bad job. I just drew a LOT of stuff between the station architecture itself and all the stalls. So a lot of it was pretty colorful (which I had also asked for in a note sent with the line art). But when I got the pages back, they were a bit TOO colorful, and I found it a bit hard to reconcile some of the colors.
I ended up going in and adjusting a lot of the colors, making some more neutral grays and tans and desaturating others. But I also added MORE colors in some cases, like all the awnings, signs, and banners. These were definitely some of the hardest pages I’ve had to deal with, color-wise, as I wanted it to feel like a lively market, full of colorful banners and store fronts, but I also wanted it to not be too much of an assault on the eyes!
In the end, I’m really happy with how they turned out. Cyril did an amazing job with the pages, which made it fairly easy for me to just do some color adjustments to make them fit my aesthetic a bit more.
Ah, Rook! Will we see what she looks like or will she become the never seen problem solver of the Runners Universe? Maris from the TV show Frasier comes to mind.
Smart to include a glimpse of other species hiding while the chase and fighting are going on. The location looks very nice and definitely should be re-visited in another story.
Ah, Maris. I do love a good classic sitcom reference! But Rook will indeed be showing up soon.
I would’ve loved to have even more aliens in the background to really make it feel like a bustling market. But (a) I felt it would have been a little distracting to have a lot of background action, and (b) I am lazy.