Author notes

Chapter M7: Dampened Enthusiasm | Part 9

ccznen

on March 27, 2022

Panel 3 was shot with Mindy and Max suspended in front of a plain blue background. I erased the pieces holding them up and added the ripple effect in Photoshop, but didn’t have to adjust any colors. The lighter spot in the background is just how the light from my desk lamp reflected off the background. I think it looks a lot better than it would have if I had cut out the characters and pasted them on a completely different background.

For panel 4, I secured my phone in place and shot the scene twice, once with the divers, and once without them. I used the clean plate to cover up the rods suspending Mindy and Max. When I first learned about this technique, I didn’t have access to Internet tutorials; I figured it out myself after reading a book about the making of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. The first time I used it, it was in a stop-motion animation. I was using Windows Live Movie Maker to edit videos at the time (never do that!), so I had to accomplish the effect by manually editing every frame in Photoshop.