– Commentary –

Craig: Just for the record, Angelina did not use small words in her explanation.

J.D.: Well, maybe English has smaller words than her native tongue. I love how she puts her sword away in panel 4.

Craig: I’ve often wished I could park my car like that. Close the door, and *poof!* The car is gone.

J.D.: And when you want it again — *poof!* It reappears. Preferably with a full tank of gas.

Craig: Well, sure — I mean, rods charge in your backpack, right? So why wouldn’t my car recharge too? Especially if it’s a hybrid. You know, half electricity, half mana?

Craig: I had lots of fun drawing panel 5. I enjoyed creating the faun with the katana, and it was refreshing to cut loose with the half-breeds and draw some outlandish things. Later on in the comic I get to draw some even more bizarre creatures. These are tame by comparison. 🙂

J.D.: I’m always struck by the tragic artistry of panel 6. It’s beautifully done, and yet what it’s depicting is… horrible.

Craig: In 2000 B.C. Egyptian culture was was reaching a peak in the reign of Amenemhat III. I thought the fey council would have borrowed some of their style from the reigning human culture. So I tried to capture an Egyptian style of hair in panel 6.

J.D.: In such long-lived creatures, however, clothing styles wouldn’t change as quickly as they would among humans. Thus, you can see a certain similarity between how the people are dressed in panel 6 and how Angelina has been dressed thus far.

Craig: Until her transformation.

Craig: I really liked how you did the silhouettes in panel 3, especially the hevenin in the foreground.

J.D.: It’s always interesting to try and capture expression and body language in a flat silhouette, because nuance means everything. The curvature of the neck, the slope of the shoulders — you have to communicate everything you want to say in a few lines.

Craig: If I remember correctly, I actually did a full sketch of both creatures and gave them to you, and you reinterpreted them as silhouettes for the page.

J.D.: When you’re talking about races in generalities, I thought it better to leave the faces blank because she wasn’t talking about specific people. Thus, it allows you to fill in for yourself whose faces those are, because they’d be different from circumstance to circumstance.

(Thanks to Wikipedia for refreshing our memories about Egypt.)

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