Weight jokes

Lexii can’t help but prank Ronni- after all, she is a pixie. Hopefully I managed to say a lot with a little, when Ronni expresses not liking to get small. She feels vulnerable when everyone and everything is bigger than her, unsurprisingly. But given how this is going to play out, I didn’t want to go explore that too much.

This is Lexii’s time to shine, storywise.

DEE’S NOTES

I have been DYING to get to this page for months now, as I really love Lexii as a character and finally getting to reframe the art to show her full in frame is a LOT of fun.

While most of the other characters have morphed to have more realistic facial proportions, little Lexii remains much more animated and she's a delight to draw. Plus,scenes like this are all about the character acting, expressions and emotions, and that is artists crack for me.

Additional features, no user's manual

I like the idea that the Witch’s Arrow is a lot more complex a scrying feature than just an arrow pointing in the right direction. So with this close-up, we see that there is much more information available. It’s all written in Frost Giant because she hasn’t clarified anything to the sensor, but we can see the big man in profile here.

Tiny pin-up Lexii is adorable. We’re heading into one of my most anticipated sequences of the story, and it will feature Lexii quite a bit. So that’s why everybody is looking at her.

Behold the face of the mighty monarch of the frost giants. He is quite a big guy, isn't he? But you're bigger.”

Your Special Eyes

So, little backstory here.

When the original Ali Kazaam model was created, he had what I called ‘Gambit Eyes’. There was no reason for it other than it appealed to Koen’s sensibilities, and it carried forth ever since... until page 63. Where Dee reflexively drew Ali with normal human eyes, and I really liked how it humanized him. So, in story reason for it- 95% sure there’s a spell for that like Doomguard or something, but I didn’t bother to look it up.

Past all of that, it was high time Ali actually own his behavior on this quest towards Kane, and maybe redeem himself ever so slightly. It doesn’t excuse his behavior, and Ronni’s not about to let him off the hook. But even as Lexii gags on it, Kane is willing to give him some credit for a start towards rebuilding that bridge.

Last panel shows the Arrow of Direction looking like I had always intended for it to- like the compass from the map we use as a background image for the site. Koen flat out refused and did his own thing, but as we’ll be revising things once the story is done and literally ready to go to print, THIS is what it always should have looked like, and Dee gave me just what I was after with this.

I also love Swann in the background, always keeping an eye on what the big girl is doing next.

DEE’S NOTES:

On any given page, if I CAN, I will be focusing on Lexii in the background. I seriously love her, so if she CAN be in there, I’ll fit her in. She was prominently busy on the last page in very intentional ways, and that continues here.

BIG HUGS

After the last page, where Britomart explained the facts of life on Imperial Urth, Kane considers her words. I love Karloff’s shrug of ‘Well?” in that second panel, leading to Kane setting him down in the third. By the fourth panel, Ronni is moving from reactive to proactive- she HAS been listening all this time, and she is forming up a plan.

Alan Alda once said, “Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you.”

That’s when Ali Kazaam wakes up, and we get a little mini-giantess love, and an admission from Ali, who for some reason just so strongly reminded me of Elliot Page from the roughs on in this panel. Note Karloff's tendrils and eldritch energies reaching for Ali to heal him while everyone is distracted in panel 6.

Again, great camera work from Dee, and the expressions sell this sequence for me.

Side note? As the situation is in the process of de-escalating, note Lexii’s position for most of the page- bow in hand, right behind Britomart’s head.

Just sayin.

DEE’S NOTES:

I love this page. It’s weird for me to say as the artist, but I get to run such a wide gamut of emotions in this sequence and on this page that I just adored working on it. I looked at my own face in my camera to work out her expressions in the first two panels to show that she, like Sabrina mentioned, is really listening.

And the tonal shift to elation, and a little physical comedy when Ali turns out to be okay, was a joy to work out since we kept Ronni a little bigger than not. For the last few pages, Ronni was fearful at losing her one link to her own reality, and it was easy for me to imagine how that would feel.

Sure, the wildly untrustworthy witch said she would whisk Ronni home when the quest was done, but I know I wouldn’t trust that.

So, in my head, it stood to reason that when Ali was threatened, it represented a lot to Ronni emotionally. Not just because of her feelings for him, but for the idea that if he died, she might be stuck in this nightmare forever. None of that was in the script, per-say, but it was a part of my thought process in designing her expressions.

The Light of Truth

My favorite thing about this page is it truly is Britomart’s big moment. She plants her sword in the ice to underlight it all- serving her purpose, to drive back the darkness with the light physically as she attempts to do so spiritually. Kane is entirely likely to kill Karloff here in her moment of rage and pain and moral anguish, but the Knight of the Light puts her foot down and orders her to stand down.

Which, of course, you will notice, Giant Girl does not comply. You might also note Lexii is missing from every panel. Which is not entirely accurate- she’s invisible at the moment, and in the confrontation between Kane and Britomart, she’s got a bead drawn on somebody, make no mistake.

So, realizing her limitations, Britomart sighs and explains how the world works. THIS world in particular. A friend once described it as ‘Adventurer’s ethos’, the logic by which adventuring parties in fantasy worlds justify being roving murder gangs. In this case, it’s an examination of order vs chaos- Britomart is the representation of law, and Ronni is, as she observed, chaos’ whim incarnate. She do what she want, when she want, and usually how she want.

Knowing that she cannot beat Kane nor force her to obey, Britomart tries to shine a light into the woman’s soul, and while pointing out she would have done the same to the goblins if she could, that Ronni’s morality is ill-suited for this sort of adventure.

Which will drive Ronni to start making some choices in short order.

This was a big drama page, and hopefully it works for the readers as well as it worked for us as storytellers.

DEE’S NOTES:

Artistically, I ADORE putting poor Ronni through this emotional ringer. She is questioning every choice she’s made and feeling extremely powerless about it all. As such, we worked to get that all and more into her conflicted emotions and the almost childlike scooching on her butt she’s doing here.

It not only allows for framing of the party around her and a way to have Brit look almost BIGGER than the literal titan in the room, but it visualizes her inner conflict where she has very little to actually say.

Giant Girl, Apex Predator

After the drama of the previous page, the action explodes again here as we see the party turning on 'what was already down here' that the giants had been fighting off, trying to survive. A polar worm for Ronni, some ice spiders for Smoke, rescued by R'Lithon, and the trio of the elves and Swann battling an animated chest that should look familiar to any experienced dungeon dweller.

Again, King Lars, lord of the Hillbilly Giants, was clearly the smartest and most eloquent of the bunch, as tends to happen in such cases. His death is one of pathos, I hope, even as he makes a classic Jack Elam expression in death.

Hearing Karloff put it in such blunt terms, all accurate from his perspective, is really not something Ronni was expecting, nor did she want to hear, obviously. Which will set us up for a summation of fantasy morality and how it doesn't jibe well with 21st century society. But the expression on this page really sells it all I think, beyond what my words add to it all. I hope you enjoy this page as much as we did creating it.

DEE'S NOTES:

This page was a MAJOR challenge to pull off and I'm really pleased with the work we put into making it right.

After a lot of back and forth, Sabrina really pushed me to go further into the heavier shadows as Britomart's sword is essentially the only real light source, reflections aside. Aside from the more intense lighting, which I think really DOES push the EMOTIONAL intensity of this scene, I really wanted to emphasize just how emotionally fragile and conflicted our heroine is during this adventure.

It's an emotional roller coaster for her that is taking a deep toll on her, and the threat of losing Ali, her only link to her own reality, is bringing her to a breaking point that is a tremendous challenge to visualize. And, of course, leave it to the doomsayer to say the EXACT wrong thing to set off our heroine!

In my original script I had Britomart shouting something like ‘wanton harridan’ or somesuch at Ronni, when reading the script 6 years later or so I realized Britomart would know better than to be calling Ronni names by this point. Calling her a mercurial creature, however, seemed pretty accurate, so course adjusted.

I was pretty harsh with Dee on this page, as she wasn’t delivering the degree of shadow and contrast that I wanted, and we went back and forth for a while. But as usual, we got on the same page and I think the results in dramatic lighting lending tension speak for themselves.

DEE’S NOTES:

As chaos erupts, mood lighting was a key factor in this, along with some selective mid and close-up shots on Britomart and Ronni’s faces as they react to everything.

There’s a lot of facial acting in this page that I’m pretty happy with that shows just how tumultuous this all is for Ronni as she struggles with the possibility of losing her only link back to her regular world.

Land of the Giants The big reveal, where we get to see the giants in their entirety. After seeing this I thought perhaps the page order should have been reversed, with this preceding page 58. But while we got the heavily shadowed version on the last page, this is eyes adjusting to the limited lighting and us really getting the good look at just who’s down here, with some scale that is still not entirely the focus, given the camera angle

This is where Ronni gets clued in on what her mercy at the giant encampment produced, and how it has been perceived by the giants. This might be a bit confusing from a moral compass standpoint, but stay with us, gang. This sequence takes a few pages to play out, but I promise you we are going somewhere with it and it isn’t just about rubbing Kane’s nose in it.

DEE’S NOTES:

We don’t do splash pages all that often, but when we do, it’s usually pretty epic. This big reveal of the giants from the shadows, I decided to set from a low-angle shot where Ali Kazam and a normal-sized Ronni are large in the shot, but in perspective to hopefully reinforce just how big our new arrivals here are in proportion. It’s much the same trick I like to use to emphasize Ronni’s size when she grows and I think it’s effective and hopefully, a bit imposing here.

North she bade I am in love with this page. We get the giants looming out of the shadows while King Lars of the Hillbilly giants negotiates- remember, Ronni stole his maul? He’s even in Dirk Swann’s report to the Imperial Overlord, holding his crown in his hands and looking back at the camera.

According to the way giant society works, he would be the least among them, so him being the spokesman is because he’s the one they deemed expendable. I love Britomart’s restraining hand to the party, and that she’s willing to talk. Lawful, yes, but good.

So for those of you who could not understand why there was a giant black widow spider back in the Hillbilly Giant palisade? Now you know. The Witch did say the giants were moved by another force, and a darker force beyond that. Say what you will about the Witch of Washington, she was very economical about what she said, but none of it was inaccurate whatsoever.

I will freely admit, I am very proud of King Lars’ speech here, and Dee’s artwork really brought it home.

DEE’S NOTES:

With this page, there’s another visual and tonal shift in the style of the art. Going full-bore into the intensely deep, highly-rendered shadows on our giant here was just sooo much fun to draw. I really went a little overboard on the rendering, but I’m glad I did.

Using some radial line glowing from the sword also helped to separate the visual planes of the artwork here.

As you fall through the ice (cue David Gilmour guitar riff)

DEE’S NOTES:

In discussions with Sabrina, the primary creative direction here and in the next chunk of pages to come is that Britomart’s sword is the primary light source while they’re in the caves. It’s a great artistic challenge and has been fun to play with the dense shadows. Also, like the last page, that straight-up cartoon character shrug from Lexii was a lot of fun to draw.

DISQUS

We're still wrestling with this, so bear with us. You can comment if you go check 2/3 of the way down the gold rectangle on the very bottom of the site, and look for 'recent comments'. OR if you navigate to the previous page, you can see the comments there, and then if you navigate back to the current page the Disqus will be visible. If any of you out there have experience and a solution for this, we're all ears.

Meanwhile, this is our workaraound. Feedback from the fans is what tells us how our work is received, and it's an important part of the process, particularly in a longflow story like this. We look forward to hearing from you, and your perspectives, whether you think we are going great or off the mark on something, we love to hear.

In short, we've got a pain in the butt comments section, and we apologize. Under construction, please excuse our mess.