Stuck in an elevator, a panicking woman yells excessively, using up precious cartoon space with her speech bubble. A man tries to calm her down during the elevator emergency.

I like the idea of cartoon characters interacting with their environment. A large and expanding speech bubble encroaching on a character’s space was something I had thought about and a broken down elevator scene seemed to be the ideal setting for it. The characters would have nowhere to go and this would be accentuated by the limited panel space, hopefully giving a sense of claustrophobia.

After I had completed it, I thought a simple animated effect might be a nice touch. One of the easiest animated effects that requires no character movement from frame to frame is a lighting transition. Since the woman in the cartoon is freaking out about various things, one of which is failing lights, a repeated transition between light and dark would be ideal to simulate a flickering fluorescent tube. The downside is a substantial increase in file size because of the extra frames involved, but I think the resulting effect serves it well.

I can’t say I have any first-hand experience stuck elevators, though I have ascended and descended stationary escalators and have to say I felt no claustrophobia at all.