FRIDAY = NEW LILY OF THE VALLEY COMIC/BLOG UPDATES!
Page 19 is live today on Zudacomics.com. Check it out HERE!
As always, it's best viewed in the full screen mode. To do that, click the little box that says "full" in the bottom right of the comic viewer. Much more enjoyable, trust me. lol
So this page demonstrates alot further, Lily's completely misguided approach to healing her mental illnesses. Sure, she's read the right books on coping with panic attacks, but she applies the knowledge wrongly. I guess maybe some people are meant to be controlled by phobias, anxieties, panic, etc. Maybe it's doing us all a service by containing a monster. Maybe she's a monster because of it and the sinister acts she commits are her desperate attempts at freeing herself. So, what do you think at this point in the story? Is Lily a natural born monster? Or a sympathetic and tragic figure that displays the torture, confusion, and desperation of living with mental illness?
I can draw parallels now with Lily and Frankenstein's creation. Both are quite similiar, only Frankenstein's creation is likely better written... but only slightly... ;) . Maybe I've read Mary Shelley's novel so many times it's seeped into my subconscious and influences everything I do now. The similarity I'm pointing out is the tragicness of the character. It's unfortunate and tragic to me to see Lily become a monster when all she ever wanted was to belong. Much like Frankenstein's creation, she only turned on society when it seemingly through her eyes turned on her. Perhaps it was all in her head, a victim of automatic thought and paranoia, which makes it sadder in my eyes. At this point, she's far detached and believes her actions to be just in much the same way Frankenstein's creation though.
What I like about page 19 is it reveals that Lily has done her research, she's tried hard to control her struggles with anxiety and panic. She says herself on page 18 that she's read the books on controlling panic many times. She's even memorized them and recites them to us on page 19. She's made solid effort to heal herself but she got lost somewhere along the way. This is what I was trying to demonstrate with this page and the previous. I've tried to show how much effort she's made to live normal but at the same time show that with every effort she pushes herself further from normalcy. She's only curing the symptoms in the end.
Anyway this page was one of the most fun pages to draw yet. Drawing anatomically correct lungs and brain was a blast. I had to do more anatomy diagrams after discovering how much fun it is while drawing the heart on page 13. If I can think of any more relevant anatomy to draw into the comic, I surely will.
I had to crop some of the brain diagram out, so I thought I'd throw the whole thing up here:
I chose all the tilted angles for the panels to reflect a feeling of insanity and panic. I also took them as an opportunity to lead the reader's eye through the busy page. Specifically with the gutter running vertically down the center of the page. I made it slightly wider to divide the two sides. It tilting from left at the bottom to right at the top hopefully leads the eye easily from panel 4 to panel 5. I hope it kinda tells you where to go without you having to think much about it. I tilted the image in panel 4 to help with this as well. Everything leads the eye straight up to the top again for panel 5. That's what I was hoping anyway. This turned out to be one of my favourite pages. Especially once I discovered an opportunity to reference, in the dialogue, the song I envisioned playing during this scene! I wanted the song to seep slowly into the reader's mind as Lily tells herself not to worry, which is why I skipped another panel before following it with "be happy". I'm happy with how it turned out.
Also notice the lemons, to anyone paying attention to the running motif of fruits in the book...
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