Reworking early pages - page 4.

For what's page 4, of the long version, most of the images were taken form my aborted 4 page comic, as seen in the image immediately below.
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I had done a fair bit of work on the original in creating these elaborate balloons, and pacing them, in a fairly dense and text heavy comic.

I felt this page needed an outdoor shot to help the transition between Uccello's home/studio, and the cathedral or 'Duomo', so rearranged the page, including this, in the version below. I also redrew the figures, using the 3D models, and image of the horseman in the tall panel.
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I had been pleased with some of the original images (though somehow, in panel 2, above, i managed to get a hand the wrong way round!), I had created them in Manga Studio 4, with mu old graphics tablet, and heavy correction (they call it ‘stabilisation’ on MS version 5). i had developed a certain mastery that made the correction look good. I particularly liked the panel on the bottom left (in the version above). Anyway, long story short, they look incongruous with most of the later pages, so I decided to go back and change them.
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In the last panel, I spend some time getting the 3D models dragged into roughly the same composition, and capturing Uccello’s pose as he ‘bows and scrapes’ as they call, before a person of high status. I think the revised version lacks the compositional energy of the original, and looks stilted in comparison, but ultimately, it’s not going to distract readers by looking incongruous. I have now, at different times redrawn all of the figures - all that remains from my original is the painting and architectural feature.

I've just noticed that panel 5 is missing the patterned floor - I think I just made it invisible, while working on other elements, and that it's still there in the page files! I've gone and fixed this. i've also noticed a slight ghost image of the figures, which was an earlier attempt at them - I've now deleted that. I also had to what I call 'underdraw' the figures with white so the floor pattern isn't showing through them. This then obliterated the perspective lines, which I want to visible. This would be overdone if i used it repeatedly, so I've only used it in panels where we are seeing through Uccello's eyes, as here. I tried moving the perspective lines to on top of the figures, but then they were too strong over the architectural features, so i duplicated the later, and put one above and one below, reducing the opacity of each from 30% to 20%. There's also a stray line at the bottom of Rocco (left)'s jacket. I've also gone back and fixed that. it was surprising hard to get that one line for his leg right - happily I always save the 3D model layers so I just had to make that visible. These are examples of the numerous corrections I am continually making, to get the best pages.

I added the walking figure of Uccello to panel 1. My initial idea was that we were seeing the outside, as Uccello was inside, but removing one of the word balloons from version two created the space to do that. It seems a sensible addition.