Finding Semjanine Grimm

"Sem’s bangs had been cut bluntly, and very unevenly, high on her brow. At the beginning of the summer she had dyed her hair a bright red. And now, her hair just long enough to be pulled back sharply into a pony tail, it showed off a full two inches of her natural yellow colouring springing from her scalp. Her bangs, which just the day before had also showed the same tell-tale sign of time passing, had lost their edge of red and now only her natural buttery-yellow hair colour sat above her equally yellow eye-brows... Sem’s eyes, though the same green as her mother’s and more than sufficient for seeing with, were admittedly narrow and shrewd. To compensate she had taken to drawing heavy mascara lines under her lower lids which actually made the problem worse. O had even thought, sometimes, that she might actually be pretty if she stopped drawing unnecessary attention to her eyes and quit dying her hair such strange colours."

Originally Sem was going to be named Ben (Benjanine). I had come up with her father's name, Raephite Grimm, completley indepently when I first started jotting down ideas for the story. But, once I put two and two together, I realised she would then be 'Ben Grimm' which is also the name of none-other-than Thing from the Fantastic Four. So, I either had to make her a craggy rock creature and potentially be sued by Marvel Comics or I had to come up with another name. So, I thought, Sem, was an equally fitting unisex sort of name.

Sem is O's best friend. They went to the same school and became friends once O rose to fame as the kid who blew up the school gym (No, you Buffy fans, he did not burn it down, he actually blew it up. And no he did not do it because it was not graduation and the mayor had turned into a giant snake demon.).

Anyway, above is a first drawing and description of our heroine.

We are not alone

So far the 1,000 words a week (min) on the book is ticking along. At the moment though I'm producing more drawings than writing but as long as both keep coming I can't complain.

In Arbea, we are not alone. Human beings are not the only sentient species on the planet. Humans, Rhe'zans and Gechans all share the world.

While prejudices still persist all species have learned to live in harmony. This is primarily due to the fact that each species inhabits regions that the other would find uninhabitable. The Rhe'zans reign the island to Rhe'za to the est (west) and Rhoge to the sor (south). Humans mostly rule the larger continents Arbea major and Arbea menor to the ist (east). Gechans are scattered throughout the world on smaller isles and coastal regions in the warmer climates.

The picture above shows you the three species. Meet (L - R) Opeel, Rhe'aml, and Piicol. What's their story? I suppose you'll have to wait and see.

In living colour

My favourite part of the illustrating process... colour!!!!

Since I was a kid I've spent a lot of time practicing colouring in watercolour, colour pencil and marker. But, for some reason I took to digital rendering. I think it's my love of comic books and inability to clean up after making a mess with paint that led me to digital. plus it produces such a smooth result.

It was Salvador Larroca's work on Xtreme X-men that sold me on clean digital rendering under natural line drawings. There's a loss of synergy when you wipe away the scratchings from a pencil drawing in exchange for sharper inked lines. The raw pencil against the hyper-real colouration creates a poetic dissonance.

The way I create illustrations in colour is a process of creating layers in photoshop. First I create an outline from the original drawing. Then I build up the image from the base (usually the skin) up. This allows me to make some quick flat colours to start before I start doing more detailed cropping and shading. It gets particularly fun to zoom in and start working on details that eventually build up to a much richer clean image.

raeFraefaelun Oariadne Gemiinus (Gemmy) Westhill

It's finally happened. The Mighty Orange-Peel has something other than a nickname. Thanks everyone for your suggestions and thanks Ariadne for the start to his name. Hope you don't mind the acknowledgement of your contribution!

'raeFraefaelun' is his faelty title inherited from his mother's side (Faeletor - reigning owner of a large estate of land or faelor. Something akin to a Regent or Lord. The title is then derived from this, 'rae' denoting heir or descendent of, 'Frae' being the area of land in question and the 'faelun'. 'sae' proceeds the land name if the title is inherited from the father.). 'Oariadne' is his mother's family name which follows the faelty title. 'Gemiinus' is his given name. This is diminished to 'Gemmy'. 'Westhill' is then his family name, from his father. If the title had been inherited from his father his name would simply be saeFraefaelun Gemiinus Westhill.

What's the Mighty Orange-Peel's real name?

The Mighty Orange-Peel has a face! I'm having a great time writing as the illustrations feed the writing, which then feed the illustrations. It's fun to see how the characters develop in the process. Here's the short passage in the prologue that lead to the drawing you see:

"Leaning against the opposite aquarium, his jet-black hair stood out against the back lighting, distractingly resembling the sea anemones inside. I glanced side-long at him and realised, on closer inspection, his hair looked less like an anemone and more like the hair of someone who had been electrocuted at the top of tree and, on his way down, his hair tangled in every branch."

I still haven't come up with a name for him yet though. I know his surname is 'Westhill" which is the name of my old middle-school where I first came up with the idea that turned into Opeel. But, he doesn't have a first name yet. All the secondary characters have names. But, being the main character, O has been a bit of a toughy. What do you think he looks like?