Alright, I got a battle plan. The tricky question now is when and how do I insert narration without it being jarring. I might have to edit the beginning to set the right expectations. A comic with a similar theme I'm using as a rough inspiration (though it does a lot of things I consider anti-goals) has a whole prologue to do just that.
Still working out how to continue on the right page. I keep falling back to writing narrator bubbles to talk about what happened that night and what the protagonist felt. But this approach simply doesn't mesh with my vision. The "awakening" isn't an instant from 0 to 100%, it's a gradual process where the protagonist's mind slowly starts to understand the memories. High-level introspecting would create the impression that he's already fully aware -- something I want to avoid at all costs -- and I also want to rely more on showing rather than telling. So right now, I want to continue without words, but show some struggles that are starting to become apparent (e.g. trouble moving his body because there are impulses to move it like a human body).
No help or tips for this please, I want to work this out myself.
I love that this project is such a challenge on many different levels. That's the sort of excitement I used to get with programming before I turned it into a job and looming deadlines started keeping me from solving things my own way.
I'm looking at other comics to learn how to make it flow well. The problem is that most comics live from dialogue, which is explicitly not an option for mine. I truly chose a difficult path
My biggest point of struggle is the chest floof shading. Nothing causes me as much trouble as this because it easily looks weird. The new pose in the second panel allows me to keep it solid, but not the first one.
My progress is still very slow on the comic as a whole because I treat each panel like a proper drawing. But that's okay. Practice will make me become faster and until then it's a matter of patience.
I'm compensating the additional mouth detail by leaving the teeth unshaded. Otherwise I'd have to draw the head more detailed than I'd like (to avoid the "artist's barely-disguised fetish" effect).
Volpeon Extra
@areon@icy.wyvern.rip