The 34-panel work-in-progress preview of page 36 of Just Cause is ready! Become a Patron for $1/month or more to get access.

Here's a sneak peek at a few of the panels:
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The 33rd page of my Undertale webcomic, ​Just Cause, is 5 panels away from being done! I just finished one of the more challenging panels late last night, and I liked it so much that I decided to share it on its own, without any dialogue to obstruct it.
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If you want to see the full 20-panel work-in-progress, and to be the first to see the completed page when it's published, please consider supporting me on Patreon.

For those of you who've been reading my Undertale webcomic, Just Cause, or who are thinking of getting into it in the near future, I have some exciting news:

I've gotten enough of the prose version written that I think I've filled in most or all of the possible plot holes, so starting in May, I plan to start releasing parts of the fanfiction to patrons pledging $3 and up on my Patreon.

That means after each comic update, my patrons will get to see a sneak peek of the next scene, weeks before the corresponding comic page comes out.

The whole prose version of the story will be released to the general public once it's complete. I'd do it earlier, but this tale's gotten so intricate that I want to get the whole thing written before I set it loose on the open web, just in case there's still something I've missed.

I've also decided to make the work-in-progress previews of the comic available to ALL my patrons, not just the $10 tier and up.

​I wanted to make my most popular story more accessible to people with tighter budgets, so hopefully this helps.

I've seen a few people doing open collaborations, and I thought it would be fun to do one of my own.
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For those who don't know, and open collab is where one artist creates part of a picture - usually the lineart - and invites others to do the rest and share the results. This could include color, shading, backgrounds, or all of the above.

I deliberately left the face off of this one, because I like how ambiguous the pose is. Is Mettaton jumping? Fighting? Posing for the camera? Inviting a dance partner to come join him? Sleeping? Dead? You decide!

If you choose to participate, please:

1. Add your name or URL to the credits on the image

2. Don't remove my URL from the credits

3. Send me a link to the completed picture, so I can show your work to my watchers and followers!

If you want to have the color, background and lineart in separate layers, you can use the .psd file I've attached below.

I look forward to seeing what you create. :)

I was working on the latest page of Just Cause, and Undyne had a fantasy about a battle between flowery princess swordswomen.

​Of course, knowing my tendencies, you had to know I wasn't about to just make a small, simple panel for that. No, if I'm going to draw a flowery princess sword fight, it's going to be a full print-sized beast.

 
​There's a slightly bigger version on my DeviantArt account, if you want to see it.

In the process of working on this for a week, I discovered that realistic plate armor is far more complex than I'd ever realized. SO MANY joints, seams, and fortune cookie-like elbow guards that I never knew existed.

Also, the excuse some costume designers use for dressing their female characters in basically lingerie (she needs to be able to move freely!) is apparently BS; well-crafted armor has a better range of motion than its wearer.

​Furthermore, boobplate ('breastplates' that cup the wearer's boobs and accentuate their shape) is asking to get stabbed by your own armor. Hence the lack of noticeable boobs on these ladies.

Speaking of stuff I learned while creating these outfits: I sought inspiration for the dresses by looking up the cultural meanings of different types of flowers, and choosing ones that fit the image of their personalities and backstories that I have in my mind.

The lady on the left is a disgraced princess who was discarded by the royal family while their country was at war. Despite being rejected by her family, she continues to care about her people, and is determined to protect them, even if it means putting herself on the front lines.

Her flowers and their meanings are:

Coriander: Hidden worth.

Black-eyed Susan: Justice.

Anemone: Forsaken.

The acrobatic warrioress on the right is the beloved daughter of a protective family, and was told to stay away from the battle despite her outstanding skill, strength and agility. But when she saw soldiers limping home from the conflict, and heard of the devastation that her kingdom's villages had endured, she couldn't bear to sit in safety while they suffered.

Her flowers and their meanings are:

Wallflower: Faithfulness in adversity.

Heliotrope: Eternal love.

Dog rose: Pleasure, pain, healing, secret love.

And so, the two princesses met on the battlefield. Neither knew who the other was, or how much bravery and love for their people they shared, or what they would come to mean to each other as they fought each other to a draw over and over again.

Neither of them expected that the more they learned about each other, the less they would feel like enemies, and the more they'd realize they were kindred souls.

By the way, in case you're wondering why they're not wearing helmets, there are two very good reasons for that.

One is because this is Undyne's fantasy, and she's the type to whip off her helmet right before a battle.

And the other is so you can recognize their faces when they kiss in the next panel. Because Undyne fantasizes about forbidden romance, too.

I'll add shading and a background in the future, but for now, I've been working on this all week, and am feeling a bit burned out on the project. And I don't want to keep people waiting for the next page for too long.

Also, I'd love to get your feedback on what kind of background you'd like for this. Who knows - maybe I'll make a few versions with different backgrounds and corresponding shading, if enough people are interested.

In the meantime, if you want to support me as an artist and storyteller, and to get advance access to completed art and exclusive access to works in progress, please consider supporting me on Patreon.

Sometimes, when I'm working on my Undertale webcomic, Just Cause, I draw a panel bigger than its intended end size.

This is partly to make it easier to get all the details right, and partly because I want to be able to share them in all their full-sized glory.

In the case of flashback panels, where characters remember moments from scenes I intend to flesh out later, it's also handy to have full-sized versions of the images, so I can reuse them when the time comes to show what was happening in those briefly-remembered scenarios.

The two pictures below fall into the latter category. In the comic, they're smaller, sometimes partly hidden by dialogue, and also darker to show that they're memories, so I wanted to share them with their full size and coloring.

Enjoy!

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There's plenty more where that came from! I have a general art gallery, an Undertale fan art gallery, and an ongoing webcomic based on Undertale.

To support me as an artist, and to get exclusive access to WIPs and advance viewing of completed art, please check out my Patreon!

As I was drawing one of the panels in page 13 of Just Cause, it occurred to me that this was a great opportunity for a behind-the-scenes peek at the drawing process behind my comics. Enjoy!
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It's a bit backward from the way most people do it - they make sketches and outlines, then add color. But I find that this works for me, especially because I tend to make some body parts too big on the first pass, and having a color blob lets me use the eraser to chisel it down until it's the right size.

I guess my drawing style is more like sculpting than sketching, haha.

Did you enjoy this quick demo, and would you like me to share more detailed behind-the-scenes information about my drawing process?

​Let me know in the comments!

Criteria #1: Is it necessary for the characters' development?

Some of the scenes - and, more importantly, the protagonist's reactions to the events in them - are necessary for the reader to understand how the tragic situation in Timeline 4 came to be.

They develop the characters' personalities and relationships, and they reveal why the human made the decisions they made and how they felt when they were making them.

Even though some of these scenes are partly reenactments of things that happen in the game, the internal reactions add a new layer to them, and lay the foundation for the less strictly canonical events that occur in later timelines.

Speaking of new layers...

Criteria #2: Can you add a fresh twist or insight?

Even if a scene isn't absolutely vital to a character arc, it can be worth including if you can add something new and interesting to it.

Is there a funny addition you want to slip into the dialogue? An intriguing internal reaction, or inner monologue that gives new meaning to the words that were spoken out loud?

If you can add an extra element to the scene, that new ingredient can make it fresh and interesting even for the people who have consumed the source material several times.

In fact, that strategy can even make the scene MORE appealing to that particular crowd. If someone loves a story enough to go through it repeatedly, they probably love it enough that any fresh insight or deeper exploration will be welcome, as long as it's done well.

Personally, I've kept a lot of the canonical dialogue intact, but I've also taken a fair bit of license to let Frisk have reactions that Undertale's silent protagonist doesn't canonically have, and to let the other characters react to it the way I think they would.

This helps to keep the plot on track, while adding something new instead of simply reiterating what's already been said.

Criteria #3: Does it make later scenes more poignant?

Just Cause contains a number of running themes, catchphrases, and callbacks to earlier scenes, as well as bits of dialogue later in the story that reference earlier conversations and interactions.

Sometimes, a scene early in the story, while added partly for its own sake, has its greatest value in the way it sets things up for a later scene to be five times more poignant than it would be on its own.

I don't know about you, but personally, I love it when a story can take a line or element from earlier in the tale and work it into a later scene, in a way that adds new meaning, continuity, or a sense that this running joke or catchphrase is one of the strings that ties a character's personality or relationships together.

What if the scene needs to be included or addressed, but you don't feel like writing the whole thing?

Sometimes, there are scenes that are necessary to move the plot from Point A to Point B, but you just don't feel like thoroughly retreading that ground.

Maybe you have nothing new to add, or maybe that scene simply isn't interesting enough to warrant inclusion.

In that case, one tactic I sometimes use is to have a character reflect on it later, possibly while walking or getting distracted from an activity they ought to be focusing on.

This allows me to delve further into the character's reaction to the event, without having to bog down the narrative with a blow-by-blow description of a scene that didn't deserve to stay in the final draft.

Have you encountered this question in your writing?

While fanfiction does present this challenge more frequently than most other stories, it's not the only place where this dilemma rears its head. Every fiction writer must sometimes face the question of whether or not to include a scene, and I hope this article made the decision easier for you.

And now, it's your turn to share your thoughts!

What methods or criteria do you use to decide which scenes to include?

Are there any types of scenes that definitely should or should NOT be kept in stories?

​I look forward to reading your comments!

So I decided that, instead of having Frisk's soul mode affect the movement of their soul, I'd make it affect the shape of the battlefield.

When Frisk is blue, the battlefield will narrow, or the attacks will become vertical, or both, forcing them to jump. When they're red, the battlefield broadens, and the attacks are horizontal instead of vertical, so they have to run around instead of jumping.

I figured it made more sense than having them pilot their soul through the air by waving their arms around like a conductor and becoming vulnerable to electric attacks.
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On a related note, I'm 62 pages into the first draft of the written version of Just Cause! Lots of progress on all fronts, and I look forward to sharing it with you. :)

In the meantime, the full 9-panel WIP is available on my Patreon, so if you want to see more of the battle, feel free to check it out!
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