Cloudy With a Chance of Orbital Bombardment

Completed 2018-02-18. Available releases:

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To be able to hit surface targets on Earth's surface effectively, attackers in orbit would use lasers. At the time, I thought that cyan would be optimal, but the lower diffraction loss of violet turns out to be superior, all else being equal. Depending on the power, since the air still absorbs a small fraction of the light, lasers would make a sound like a lightning crack: a thunderous roar which would continue for as long as the laser fires. This effect is much stronger when it is raining, as water absorbs more than air does in the cyan regime and also scatters the light around more. As such, you can see a cyan halo around the beam in the rainy section. Also note a hint of a hemispherical shockwave around the explosion.

This time, I only used charcoal for the clouds, and they came out a bit differently. It was harder to get an effect I liked, but I think I prefer the wider contrast? Also, I used more swirls, which I think is just strictly better. Clouds look better when there are only a few of them in the sky, I think. The buildings and mountains are okay, although the perspective is a little weird. The explosion and rain came out nicely.

The rain slants this direction more for composition, than because I am right-handed. I wanted it to be against the light direction for added tension (and I wanted the light to come from the left, in turn, because that was the way I'd had success in my previous drawing). In any case, I usually turn the page 90° (or whatever) to get the strokes to align with the easiest shading direction. For example, the circular strokes in this space station had the page upside-down.

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