Drawing the Details

Breaking down the Panel

I wanted to take this moment to highlight the amount of detail that goes into some of these panels. This may seem like a normal side panel with a simple GUI interface embedded from a fighting game, but I created this from the ground up, Including the profile pictures of the two fighters. Let's start from the top.

The Health Bar

Notice first that the timer is set straight up in the middle and is set to the number: 69 (hehe nice :D). I searched through a lot of different fonts looking for ones that mimicked the timer used in Street Fighter 4 (which is Super City's biggest inspiration, not Dragon Ball, contrary to popular belief).

Now let's take a look at the headers of the health bar next to the timers. If you look closely at the panel, you'll notice that there is a difference in words between Bernard and Joey. HP obviously means health points, and stamina is stamina (using the traditional colors of both as well), but the area where magic/super power/hyper buildup normally goes is different. Bernard's is Qi, whereas Joey's is Lir. Qi is written in the Chinese way (contrary to the Japanese version Romanized as Ki), and is essentially the fireball, magic, Qi depicted in every kung fu movie ever. I used this, instead of the more common spelling Chi, to highlight that this is supposed to be recognized as the Chinese version. Bernard's Qi meter is even different than Joey's (it has more breaks in it). And you can see him use the built up Qi on Joey. Also, his stamina meter has been used.

Regarding Joey's super meter, you'll notice that it's surrounded by a lightning effect. This was inspired by newer fighting games where when you max out your super/hyper meter, it'll start glowing. It also has less checks then Bernard's does and is based on s linear gradient. Lir (which will be explained before the end of this issue) is essentially the equivalent of Ki/Chi/Qi with a few minor differences. We'll get more into that later though.

Lastly, the Buff meters are slightly different. I wanted to go with an icon, rather then text, because it's more aesthetically pleasing. And although I know Street Fighter has no buff meter (which it should because there are buffs and debuffs in all the games i.e. certain actions have different frame times or causes lag. Trust me, I know) I felt it was important to include so I could have have the perfectly circular profile pictures. This sucked to make, as I had to think of images that people would easily associate with something. Hence, we have a fist (meaning Attack) and a shield (meaning Defense) buffs listed with red, down carrots next to them, indicating that they are both decreased.

The Profile Pictures

Has there ever been a time where you really didn't want to do something but knew that you had to, not because anyone was forcing you, but because it was important just to you? That's how I felt making those pictures, which were based on games where that is featured. Street Fighter normally puts their profiles in boxes, but I really like the circle aesthetic, and it matched with the curved health bar.

You might notice that the pictures may look a little familiar. That was not by accident. I had already spent hours creating everything else, and I wasn't about to take the time to draw two detailed people that amounted to 150 x 150 pixels each. (Consider that the normal page width and height is 2700 x 3600 pixels, meaning each of these only took up 0.23% of the area each :P). I took Bernard's picture straight from when he's demanding money, with his knife in his hand, and I took Joey's from page six and flipped it. I think I lightened Bernard's profile slightly, since I had darkened everything when it became night (in case you were wondering why the night pictures feature Joey having different colors then during the day. Yes, that was intentional. Like the title says, drawing the details). I was pleased how it turned out, especially because Bernard happened to be talking during that panel, meaning that it looks like he's shouting in his profile which games do sometimes when a character attacks (citation needed).

The Fighters

I'm not sure if many got what I was trying to convey, but Bernard Charles's style is based off of Chun-Li from Street Fighter. Hence, we get the Kikoken here. I thought it'd be funny to have a mugger do a stylized and superfluous technique. Also, I couldn't think of a single move more vulnerable super than the Kikoken, specifically the version seen here.

The blue comes straight from the technique (to the hex value!), and made a small wimpy version of the technique. You'll notice a highlight goes over Bernard where the rings appear. I also added some spray effects, since that also seems to be possible in fighting games.

Joey, as a result is standing straight and looking down at Bernard. He doesn't get bothered at all (only added by the -1 HP taken off).

The Background

Besides the hit meter, which was pretty simple to make, the hyper combo in the background and motion lines are a combination of all fighting games at once. I didn't like the Street Fighter background, but I loved the HYPER COMBO. I really felt like Motion lines were needed to highlight the pathetic fart that is the attack and the intensity behind it.

Orange to white was the obvious choice since it's blue's opposite.

Anyway, I just wanted to break down this one panel, and I hope you appreciate all the work that goes into my submissions each week.

Stay Stupendous,

Joey