To flit

With the size and mass of the citadel established, I asked for a travelogue of the girls flying their way in, penetrating the giant’s fortress unseen. We get our first glimpses of the frost giants, and a comedy act about the fae and the flit. The script called for ‘moody and ominous’ and the end product is a rather distinctly Latverian edifice.

DEE’S NOTES

The travelogue was a great idea and I love that it gave me the opportunity to have more fun drawing some fun acting with the teeny tiny figures that pushed the humor of their interaction. It also allowed us to show both how big and winding the city is and run a visual path throughout the page. HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY, CLICK HERE?

You feel me

Once up in the air, the sheer scope and scale of the frost giant citadel is laid out for the reader. While a crack in the glacier would have been more appropriate a locale for the seat of their empire, I wanted some grandeur to the frost giants with their cold, frozen hearts. This is a large, obviously painstakingly planned and constructed citadel that shows the strength of these mighty beings. This is the frost giants at the height of their power, before they became creatures of legend. When they were, instead, simply legendary.

That’s what I asked for out of this page. I got what I asked for, and I am impressed.

Plus boob joke. Here’s that the line art looked like for that piece, because it lost a lot of the charm in the ‘invisibility’ effect.

Well, okay, that’s a production drawing, because of the bluelines. But you get the idea. THAT DERP FACE OF LUST.

DEE’S NOTES

For the city, I took my idea for the concentric rings working out from the center and built the structure in basic shapes in the 3-D program, Sketch-Up, which allowed me to really set up the more intricate perspectives I wanted and tweak it before going into the actual art, which made this far easier than it would have been otherwise.

This was also a splash page in the script, but I pitched the two inset panels to really sell that boob joke, and it’s really good example of how well Sabrina and I work together. It’s always about what’s best for the page and what tells the story the way we want. Humor is a huge part of GGA, and I really loved getting to play with the visuals of this boob gag.

What they can’t see

Okay, so given that we really do often cram a lot of action into our pages, this was a deliberate slowing of that pace to continue to focus on the two lady adventurers here. In this case, I wanted to give Dee a little room to artistically explore how the two of them would work invisibly, which actually played out rather well, going back to the pioneer we learned it from, Alex Toth.

We tried a version with Ronni’s red tints, and it really didn’t work out. We publish all of that stuff on the Patreon every Sunday for the folks who are interested and support us. A LOT of production drawings every week, as every screenshot Dee sends me ends up in the file and we share the map of how we got to where we ended up from where we started. We show you the blue lines through all of the edits, even dialogue changes.

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DEE’S NOTES

I tried a few different ways to make them look invisible while still keeping them clearly visible for the reader, and this white lined "Space Ghost" technique was the winner when I submitted it, and nothing else that I'd tried, to Sabrina for review.

While it seems, otherwise, like a simple enough page, there was some back and forth on the proportion of their heads to make everything flow right. Having Ronnie essentially be the size of a toddler in relation to Lexii here adds a little bit of extra work to keep it consistent, which has been a fun challenge.

Unromantic transactions

After Ronni promises to trade her flesh for help from the pixie, Britomart is understandably a bit stunned. Clearly from his expression, Ali is picturing it in his head, while Dirk is just amused. There is a doodle that might just come to light about Ali Kazaam’s thought balloon, most likely on Patreon.

I originally had the sidebar conversation with the elves as just silent, but after I’d seen the art, the idea to play that out a bit was too good. Meanwhile, Smoke and R’lithon decide it’s none of their business and muppet, stage right.

This bit exists for plot purposes- to reinforce that Dirk Swann is the consummate adventurer, to put the whistle into play and to reinforce to us that he is always watching, listening, and taking note. On this expedition of ‘denizens of the supernature’, he is the mere mortal human, the ‘everyman’ amongst this cast of fantastic legendary figures, there at the behest of the ruling authority of humankind, watching out for mankind’s interests.

I asked for an adorable shot of the two tiny women kissing the bard on the cheek. I was not in any way disappointed.

DEE’S NOTES

There’s lots of fun opportunities for me to really dig into the acting and the body language here and explore the script as Sabrina wrote it. In the scrip, the exchanged between Flynna and Haldr was essentially a note that Flynna looked a little disgusted at what was happening with Ronni and Lexii and that was about it.  That lead to me deciding that in panel two, she should perhaps be walking away in a huff, originally because I wanted to have some of the character seen walking AWAY so that when Dirk mentioned that he would keep Ronni’s secret, we could see that they had at least a smidge of privacy.

In reviewing the rough blue lines of the page, that all lead to Sabrina and I fleshing out a single, tiny background element into what it is now, giving us a bit more of a look into their heads and making our troupe feel more like individuals, and not just background players. The creation process is usually very organic, and I always love when an idea grows legs and finds direction.

My leetle peedjon

For this page, with Ronni shrunk down to be the smaller one in the equation to Lexii, who is accustomed to everyone being bigger than she is, made for some genuine Chuck Jones style comedy. Which I asked Dee to pursue, and she delivered with panache.  I love the flow of the action, the line quality, the body detail- I asked for pin-up, and it was delivered.

One of our longest-running fans is whom Lexii is based upon, in a manner of speaking. When I was writing this script years ago, I presented her with Ronni’s proposal as written here. The response in the last panel is hers entirely. So props to Mrs. Grimm.

The script called for:

Panel 4

Small closeup of Lexii with lecherous drool hanging out of the corner of her mouth as her eyes cross.

LEX: Then tonight you’re mine?

GG: Mmmm hmmm.

DEE’S NOTES

This was one of my favorite pages to draw in the series so far. It was a LOT of fun to lean heavily into the much more cartoony Lexii and keep her more exaggerated proportions intact up against the increasingly more naturally drawn Ronni. They really do make an awesome team and I adore their dynamic. 

The pin-up panel absolutely required some reference to get right and capture the cheesecake energy, which isn't always natural for me to tackle artistically. As such, I'm extra happy that it came out as well as it did.

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.