story sketch: escape [update:04-23-2011]

[meeks]

This is a scene from the first book set in clare_dragonfly 's Chatoyant College, the only american university that has classes in magic alongside its more conventional course offerings. All is not what it seems on what, at first, appears to be a normal college campus, and freshman students Annie, Edie, Corrie, Dawn, and Rico soon find themselves fleeing the real reason the nearby forest is forbidden.

cleaned-up sketch:


rough sketch:

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Comments

[clare_dragonfly]

YAY! I love it so much! Their expressions especially are totally perfect. I love the way you have them spread out so you can see all of them. And the way Annie and Corrie have their hair flying out behind them, hee.

Cool!

[(Anonymous)]

I really like this! It's interesting to see what the characters canonically look like, which is usually very different than the way I pictured them. (Only Corrie and Edie are even close, and they still weren't right!) I like these better, though. Annie's clarinet is awesome!

[(Anonymous)]

I like it! The perspective is awesome,although it kind of looks like they're running in a zigzag on a big wide trail...
Also, I absolutely love the trees.

Hmm...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I figure there's forest floor and trees around, but the actual trail probably isn't all that wide and trails are rarely straight. Putting a tree in the curve would be too distracting, I think. A rock might work. But a mud puddle would be low to the ground and something people would avoid; those can get ankle deep or worse near or on trails.

Re: Hmm...

[meeks]

I'm filling part of it in with bushes, but a mud puddle behind Edie/next to Corrie isn't a bad idea...I might try that. Thanks!

Re: Hmm...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Yay! I'm glad I could help.

Here it's supposed to rain for a week. The water table is already transecting the surface with large puddles in the fields. We'll be lucky if we don't get flooded in by the end of this. Today we went to the nature center and there were ankle-deep puddles beside some of the trails! Not a good day to get chased through the woods by a monster. Fortunately we were just looking at invasive vs. native plants.

[becka sutton (from livejournal.com)]

It's great :-) You really excel at perspective and drawing all different body types. :-)

[robling-t.livejournal.com]

Like the sense of motion and urgency. I'm not sure that the angle of the clarinet really works, though -- I'd tip it a little bit more away from her mouth (towards vertical), I think, it just looks kind of awkward this way.

I like it but...

[miss-pooky.livejournal.com]

I agree with the previous comment about the angle of the clarinet. I think Edie is perfect, the look on her face captures her emotions very well. I'm not sure I like Corrie's arms (I really hope I mean Corrie, I'm forever mixing her and Dawn up for some reason /blush). It looks like she's just out for a jog, rather than fleeing from some evil faeries. I like the detail on Dawn and Rico, you manage to get them looking worried even though they are "farther away" :)

Re: I like it but...

[meeksp.livejournal.com]

Ok, the angle of the oboe is easy enough to adjust.
Thank you for pointing out the issue with Corrie's arms! I did want to suggest that running is a familiar activity for her, but I may have pushed it too far in that direction. Even after many years of studying body language from an artistic standpoint, it's still a bit like writing a foreign language for me, so it helps to know when I haven't quite got it right.

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith]

The urgency comes through very well. They sure look like they're running scared! *ponder* Though not totally panicked, or else the front girl would've dropped her ... oboe, I think it is.

Yay!

[ysabetwordsmith]

This firmed up nicely! The darker forest makes it more ominous. I also love how the mud puddle turned out.

[clare_dragonfly]

The cleaned-up version is even awesomer! I love how dark you made it, since it is, after all, dark there both literally and metaphorically. The oboe looks much better, too--much less like she's trying to play it ;) And Corrie's intense expression is great.

[robling-t.livejournal.com]

I like the added contrast in the tweaked version; it adds to the sense of menace to focus on the pale figures in the dark woods.