The Prime of Ambition

Author notes

Chapter 2, Page 30

Sly Eagle

on June 28, 2007

This page is more done than this, but I don't have time to finish it as I have to run an errand to Connecticut today, which will take me the better part of the day. I figured a flat-colored version is more comprehensible than a half-shaded one. There's also been work done on last week's. I'll have both completed ASAP.

Panel 1 turned up an unintentional Herge tribute while I was working on it - decided to go with it. After all, Herge did a lot for story comics. Now I get to see if any of you have a clue as to what I'm talking about.

I've been working on improving my line-art for the past few months. In specific, and some of you may have noticed, I've been working on ears and mouths. I've gotten more comfortable with elf ears nowadays - they feel more solid to me now than they did, and more importantly, Than's and Audj's ears are distinguishable from each other by shape alone (YAY!), so I've been working on adding the final factor to elf ears - articulation. Orisian elves were always meant to have ears that move (not a lot, but some), but I've been avoiding using that until now, as I was afraid of over-exaggerating and unintentional comedy (I did move ears from time to time for comedic effect, you may recall). I have a much better grasp on how elf ears articulate now, so, take a good look at Than's ears on this page. They're now a full part of the visual story-telling.

Mouths: actually, I've been lifting techinques from Masashi Kishimoto (previously, I was studying Masakazu Katsura for ideas on how to do facial expressions, if you're curious). Say what you want about Naruto, but I still consider it to be one of the better manga in existence and definitely one of the best still running.