I guess I should pick up the pace a bit if I want to finish this chapter in time for Stockholm SPX10 …
This landscape is based on Khongoryn Els (“the singing sands”) in the Gobi desert, Mongolia. There are some places where harsh cliffs suddenly are interrupted by a vast wall of sand, just like in this comic. A couple of photos from when I travelled there in 2006:
Also check out my gallery of Mongolian doggie portraits …
The freehand frames and the austere landscape work really well here. And the fact that Aeron is walking in the “wrong” direction in panel 4 adds a feeling of time passing slower.
Hmm, actually I tried to make him walk in the same direction as the reader’s eyes would be moving along the page, i.e. from left to right in panel 3, and then from right to left in panel 4 towards the left part of panel 5 …
I had to make a special effort to implement that, because inside my head I just saw him walking from right to left all the time. O_o But of course that wouldn’t really work in a comic that’s read from left to right.