Hello! I’d like to keep you up to date about posts here on Patreon, because I’ve been absent for a while. Unfortunately, for several weeks, I’ve had some health problems that have hampered my activities. In particular, I was affected by an inflammation of the middle ear (apparently an unforeseen sequel to covid) which has had me with dizziness of varying intensity. It became hard to spend prolonged time with screens, or in front of changing light contrasts. After a period of rest, and following medical treatment, I can now say that I am much better, almost recovered. It’s been a slow recovery, hard to perceive at first, but in the last few days I’ve been able to resume work of all kinds, including creative work. This is why I haven’t posted updates here, nor progress on a new comic yet. Currently, I’m already working on a new story, and I hope to share progress of it very soon. If everything goes right, I’ll be taking new request for custom drawings during the next month too. I’m sorry for the silence during the last few weeks, and I want to thank you once again for your patience and support.

In order for this not to be an update without some art to look at, I’m also sharing here two pieces I finished before this situation, for kind patrons of the Earthquake Critic level:

A new werewolf portrait, for patron Kolinahr:

And my version for patron Amy’s Neverwinter Nights character :

I hope you are all well,

Juan 

For every new Secret Knots comic, I make a Patreon post with sources, references and bits of world building. This is the dossier for the comic How to step out of the picture.

1. Inspiration

This comic was inspired by photos I took in a concert crowd. (It was a recent The Cure concert. I’m adding this just as trivia, and not because it was a particular prompt for the story, though if I had found a Cure fan in white makeup staring at the screen it could have intensified the oddity of it all I guess) Taking half rushed selfies in the dark, it was only later that I found out people looking at the screen in some of them.

 Some time later, I saw the video for the song Things Must Change by Anhoni and the Johnsons, where there are signs and graffiti with different lines, and I noticed particularly one that reads “No one’s getting out of here”. Something about this line, out of its context, triggered the image of the people in the photos holding signs with ambiguous meanings.

 As with other comics before, the resolution went through phases of being something different: a horror story, or a weird joke on the challenges of getting to know new people these days. In the end, I went for a mysterious adventure that suggest a larger world, but doesn’t really offer explanations. The line from the song, which I used as a title for a while, became almost its opposite, the idea of getting out of the picture, literally and figuratively, and stepping into that outer unknown place. A lot of the structure in the comic is the result of wanting to keep it as short as possible. Had the comic been longer, perhaps it would have taken the route of one of the concepts I kept for the headcanon section, a little further down this post.

2. References

Someone on Tumblr identified Waterloo Station in London as the location of the last panels. The choice for the place was based on an image search for stations and crowds. I moved the final scene from a crowded street to a big public indoors space because of a drawing preference: I don’t like drawing modern cars, which are kind of unavoidable in street scenes; I prefer drawing structures instead, so a big station was a perfect solution. Does the story take place in London? I’m not confirming nor denying.

  In fact, for this scene in a pedestrian walkway, I used a picture from Yerevan, Armenia. I like the mixed architecture in the photo.

  An interesting hat

I really wanted to use the headpieces from the Martian Chronicles 1980 TV series, because I’m fascinated by them, but they really didn’t belong in this story. I’ll surely keep trying to use them as inspiration for something else.

3. Head canon

Things that were considered, could be happening, or are definitely happening, in the background of the story

I hadn’t included a head canon section for a while in dossiers it seems, but this story calls for one, since the plot suggests further mysteries to unveil.

• What are the plans and methods of the people in the background? The hats may be a way of calling the attention of those who look into details, and ask them to join a cause, while the signs suggest a crack in reality, “things becoming less real”. Is the panoptic, streetview-scanned contemporary world the starting point of this fracture? Are they taking people with them to a different, “more real” place? Is there an exit door, somewhere, hidden out of the frame? The station in the final scene could qualify as the right, liminal space to make the miracle of crossing boundaries possible.

• What if they are indeed some kind of ghost entities? Digital ghosts perhaps, haunting the phone galleries: remnants from deleted files, neglected people from undesirable pasts, or simply bad selfies that took a life of their own, and go from user to user in a ghostly bluetooth current, seeking redemption. A new kind of spirit for this comic, maybe.

• And, in that case, what could happen if the main character shared these pictures? Would the ghost feel vindicated, back in the public eye, and end the curse? Or would it spread even further?

*****

That’s all for this dossier, I hope you liked these notes. Many thanks for your support and feedback during the making of this comic, and I’ll see you soon with more stories and art.

Juan.

A couple of pieces for patrons in the Earthquake Critic tier: a wedding picture, with characters in the nocturnal setting of the game Fallen London

A futuristic picnic scene, prompted by a request for a drawing of a brutalist building. The building used as reference is a center for the arts in Salvador de Bahía, Brazil, built in the 70s.