AD 1997 Sketchbook

Author notes

Ep. 2 Page 5 Thumbnail

Abt_Nihil

on Oct. 29, 2007

Here's an example of what my thumbnails for the first two episodes looked like; in fact this is the most detailed layout thumbnail I did. And as you can see: I even did two. Comparing this to the actual page you can see the progress and corrections I made.

The two possibilities Naomi's considering here as an explanation of the black orb's origin are more or less improvised, meaning they didn't appear in the script (which wasn't as detailed as ep. 1's script to begin with). In the script I set a storytelling-"goal" for each page and when scribbling layouts I would consider ways of how best to achieve that goal. This page is somewhat a digression from the main storyline, but since it's really the ONLY digression in the whole pilot (I like to call eps. 1 & 2 "the series pilot") I thought I could take this chance to confuse the readers a bit…

The first possibility Naomi's considering is a spoof of Green Lantern's origin, which is rooted in my then-recent reading Darwyn Cooke's "New Frontier" miniseries (which I highly recommend). The second is my stab at a somewhat Marxian oversimplification of a manichaic (simple good/evil) schema. The following panel is Naomi's recalling what happened between eps. 1 and 2, Motes telling her she could (or rather should) leave.