Two more Huzzah pages done since I returned from holiday - this orange page was done whilst still suffering nausea from a stomach bug, which I think helped the look of the page. The idea was to do something tormented and over powering as the grief-stricken Hexen Definitive* realises her baby that she thought was dead is in fact alive and has been hidden from her all this time.
With all that emotion in mind I left the page looking rough as hell to give it that cry-your-heart-out look. Feeling nauseous helped me realise how such news would knock her world spinning into the void. I guess the spiral staircase is a classic surrealistic device for achieving a sense of vertigo and disorientation, and the fellow with crescent-shaped head also seems to belong in some surreal nightmare/nursery rhyme. I'd love to say that I planned all this, but the truth is I just spent a few feverish hours scrawling away in photoshop and ended up with the whole thing virtually finished.
By contrast this second page shows a clearer head. I've simplified the colour again - I like to use colour for atmosphere and emotional impact rather than use it for 'realistic' description or decorative effect. At least that's how I feel at the moment. Here the whole thing's meant to look subterranean and unnatural. I ended up with a kind of formaldehyde-tank-in-the-night-museum look.
This page was also a case of going back and reintroducing ideas from the very beginning of the story. The infant first mentioned on Page 2 is revealed. It appears that the Glass Tsar has two heirs - a natural heir and a very unnatural heir that lurks in a pit deep below the surface of Voldar.
I knew I was going to do a reveal of the infant on this page and went through numerous monstrous variations on the Glamis Castle Monster theme. In the end I decided it would be scariest if the creature that lurks in the dark, eating people, actually looked like a... baby.
*At least that's what I'm calling her. Name borrowed from Mark E Smith.
![[huzzahnoir2.jpg]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfLdDLBBPfTSXRPWrnWAtBD0aOZCN-zriqioFPJjPJkoxY_aiXqD070FccoLIdFOmwjNgUsYhjDfS9Rby_Ma7JXa-i5imDIl2Ytku1_gMjs3jRgRlOJMALTP_pDI6ovoek8_Uhz-zi7Eum/s1600/huzzahnoir2.jpg)
6 comments:
That ain't no ordinary baby! THE EYES, MY GOD, THE EYES!!!! RUN AWAY!!!
I told you, Rob. Babies are terrifying!
GIANT scary-eyed babies, especially. Cracking stuff Rob.
Crackin' stuff. The colours are great. Lovely, lovely stuff
Cheers people. I still think it's the idea of a man eating baby with glowing eyes that's scary rather than just the fact it's a baby, Faz.
Have you seen the baby in the sun in Teletubbies? Don't try to convince me it's anything but terrifying. I have a slight thing about sunflowers too, they're just too big and have such dark hearts and give me the creeps. That combination of a baby's face in what looks like a giant sunflower in the sky is just too much.
Oh, is that the end of our session? See you next week Dr. Freud.
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