The Capital of Helsinki

21. Once Upon a Time in Western Helsinki

Author notes

21. Once Upon a Time in Western Helsinki

Air Raid Robertson
on

The other day I was thinking about how I haven't drawn any Western stuff in a long while. I then thought of putting a cowboy shootout gag in Capital of Helsinki, but I couldn't think of a punchline.

But then, well, this one just sorta came to me.

Naturally, my standard three panel layout wouldn't work for a gag that's very dependent on a protracted staredown sequence. I briefly considered extending the length of this scene to maybe two or three pages. That might've been overkill though, and I don't really want to do any Capital of Helsinki strips that are more than one page long anyways.

I do believe that my linework for this one was ultimately pretty good. (The coloring I'm not too happy with) The Clint Eastwood-type figure in the foreground of the first panel was done with a brush. The Eli Wallach-type figure in the background was done with a standard nib.

This was the first time I tried to use line width in a manner to convey distance. I'm pretty proud of the result.

I'd also like to note that I played around with the shading here. Eastwood and Wallach are lit in opposing directions for most of the strip. However, in the last panel they're lit from the same direction. I was hoping it'd subtly convey that the two suddenly saw eye to eye in the end.

Comments

Please login to comment.

Login or Register

Advertise with us

Moonlight meanderer

DDComics is community owned.

The following patrons help keep the lights on. You can support DDComics on Patreon.