Prologue: Page 7
Rachel and I hope you’re enjoying the prologue chapter so far! This brief history of the landscape and its denizens is intended to help readers become accustomed to the various races of the world, but is also included to help establish the frame story of the comic – that being a recounting of events by the character introduced in the first several pages. The shift in art style is meant to drive this point, but it was not always this way!
Back when this story was in its relative infancy, this page consisted of only 1/3 a page, was full-color, and really lacked the visual oomph it needed to establish countless years of pain and strife:
(Click for full-size)
While this does establish the “nights of endless battle”, it didn’t really work at the end of the day for a few reasons. First, in the context of the rest of the page, the importance of this panel was lost very quickly, as it was only half its current size originally. What is now page 6 was once the top 1/3 of this page, so in other words, we had originally crammed 2 pages’ worth of material into a single page, and it was doing us a tremendous disservice.
The biggest problem, though, was that the “battle” scene just didn’t feel right in the context of the prologue. This is meant to be a history lesson, not “Gladiator”, after all – so Rachel proposed a most brilliant idea: the scroll motif. Taking visual cues from the Bayeux Tapestry and adapting it to look and feel like an actual scroll being written in Gair’s Great Spire by the Felis scholars, the new prologue direction felt more appropriate almost instantly, and there was much rejoicing.
The thumbnail for the new page therefore was much more stylized than before, not showing any particular scene or battle, but serving as a kind of metaphorical representation for all the damage done to all the races in the Four Kingdoms, and to subtly set up future rivalries between certain races in particular. The bottom panel was done in such a way so that it looked like multiple scrolls overlapping one another, again trying to keep the feeling that you are reading actual historical scrolls in an ancient library.
Another thing to notice is the Felis script. All of these scroll pages have it, and they all offer a little bit of insight into how the Felis scholars who wrote these scrolls view the rest of the world. The Prologue page gives you those letters in both English and Felis, but we’ll be sure to add some more translation hints down the line for those interested in reading the “notes within the notes”!
I really enjoy seeing the behind-the-scenes stuff.
Yes, I was definitely thinking of the Bayeaux Tapestry myself when this style first popped up on the previous page, so I’m happy to see my initial impressions confirmed. It really breaks things up, in a good way, and injects a welcome visual variety into the proceedings to keep the reader engaged. My only question now, which remains to be answered, is exactly which were the “seven species?” Because I really can’t quite identify all of them so far from just the illustrations …
Funny you should ask! The seven species are all introduced after next week’s page. They’re actually some of my favorite pages that Rachel’s done thus far, juxtaposing the scroll style with her more detailed “real world” style.
Just wanted to say this looks fantastic so far. Already a fan of Rachel’s artwork, and I’m excited to see this tale you both have crafted come together. :)
We move on with the scroll, this time depicting the battles fought by the seven species of the lands. The racial enmities we’ll see later are already apparent – we have Felis stabbing Vulpin, Tamians shooting Polcans, Canid dominating Ermehn and… Vulpin stabbing Tamians? I didn’t know that. And in the back no less – does it symbolize some kind of betrayal?
Anyway, the scroll brilliantly summarizes the battles and hatreds, gives us the info we need and moves the story along, and while it did have the potential to look goofy I think this page does a great job conveying the tragedy and senseless violence of the history described by the scroll. And it still looks awesome!
It was also nice to get to know how this page developed into the scroll form it has today and get a glimpse of the scene as it originally stood. However, I think that the original battle scene (which also looks pretty cool) is a bit too small. Any chance of getting a larger version so we can see it in all it’s gory – eh, I mean glory – better? Same thing might go for the scroll sketch.
Forever battle
Many lives lost
After the war the four kingdoms were built