Annotated 8-5
We wrote the script for this scene (and I think the whole chapter) before knowing that Erica wouldn’t be finishing it, and we had far too many story ambitions to try cooling down its demanding nature. So we threw would-be artists into the deep end with this page. We sent it to several, but the only ones who got back to us with art were John Waltrip, Christi-Maria Vivar, and Seb Tourenne. Vivar’s work is seen at right; Seb’s work is below. Click them for bigger images.
In one sense, this is the ideal place to transition art styles, because we’re injecting our characters into a new and larger world.
John’s work here is not as good as it would become over the course of even the next five or ten pages– he had a lot to figure out and very little time to prepare– but he was already dealing pretty well with this demanding crowd scene and zeroed in on the tone we needed. There’s a low growl of energy to his page, a sense that everyone is on the verge of motion, with two exceptions. Either Syr’Nj and Gondolessa are confident enough in their diplomatic skills that they’re not worried about a fight breaking out right now, or they’re good enough diplomats to fake it.
There’s also a willingness to engage with backgrounds that’s kind of essential to fantasy but one of the first things that stressed artists cheat about. And John clearly approaches the assignment of rendering all these different species, some of which we’d barely seen before, with some relish. In short, Christi-Maria and Seb gave us everything we technically asked for, but John seeded in a lot more of what we were looking for but didn’t want to overwhelm a new artist by mentioning.
“and… here… we… go.”
It’s good to be back everybody. It was indeed a mad-cap start for me. Drawing characters I had never drawn before, and Savage characters even Erica hadn’t drawn very much. The three-day-a-week schedule was pretty grueling at first, but I got used to it, and I was happy to have some regular work for a while.
I think T & Phil chose wisely. Both of the other entries were good, but yours was simply better.
Goddammit I like this page. But it was not to be.
; _ ;
This and/or the next few pages is where GA truly hooked me!
Alt-text didn’t make it to the annotated version.
Hm! Okay, got it.
Doubly subverted trope: Bandit’s question didn’t provoke the gods of misfortune into making it worse for Gravedust than for the rest of them, but only because they got it worse than she expected. (BTW, I sure am glad that I’ve already read so much of TVtropes that I don’t always get stuck in an hours-long binge whenever I go there to check something.)
The art shift was a little jarring the first time around, but it’s even more jarring now that I’m used to the way John ended up drawing them. Luckily, the Waltrips only take about a week to settle into a style. :)
John also seems to be the only one who understood the need for space for text.
The text bubbles will always cover something, and the trick to making that not seem tragic is to have there be enough stuff not covered.
That way the reader will usually just “mend” the image in their heads by extending the background that is not covered.
That would have been immersion-breakingly difficult with the other ones, nice as they are.
Also, “Well, at least it’s not raining.”