Rawlin art from Madgic #3

[lb_lee]

Mori: I'm working on Madgic #3 again! I was stuck cooling my heels for months, waiting for my brain, and now I have the final six penciled comics pages I need to get it done. It's all Rawlin stuff, and we don't have a lot of art of him here, so I'm uploading some! (Sorry, y'all only get the non-spoilery stuff.)

People who only know Rawlin by reputation tend to imagine him as some hideous troll of a man, but no, he's really classically handsome... as long as he doesn't move or emote. Once he does, everyone runs screaming. Madgic #3 covers the brief window before that time, when he was still himself and not psychologically hideous.

Rawlin's size makes him a royal pain to fit into panels. He's curled in a ball on our healthymultiplicity.com header bar because it was the only way to make him fit! He's so gigantic, we can't even do the David Hasslehoff tricks of having him lean on things or do the Captain Morgan knee-bend to make him fit better. You have to completely frame the paneling around him, and the challenge is conveying through comics that it is HE who is BIG, not everyone else who is tiny.

I've chosen to deal with it by having Rawlin conspicuously strain the boundaries of every panel he is. Everything should feel just a little too close-up, a little too tight around him. I want it to be uncomfortable, because being around him these days is uncomfortable.

Another thing I've tried to do is show how Rawlin has changed, and how his behavior can make him seem like a decent, overly-large man... or absolutely terrifying once the wheels start coming off his bus. I tried to show the inner conflict in his earlier stages of not-okayness as his compromised self and his original self kinda fight back and forth without him realizing he's doing it... at first. I wanted to be able to follow, by the panel, which Rawlin was running the face levers at any given time, and I wanted Rawlin's realization to be visible.



I am stupid proud of that last face. That there is the face of a man who has just realized how irreparably he has fucked himself. I'm still not happy with the "No" one.



Original ink lines. Even when Rawlin was getting god-eaten, for a little while we could still work well together. This was probably the last time we ever did.


Finished version, with brush pen fills.

Comments

[sinistmer]

I really like how his hands overlap into the next panel! The final version of the picture is really good too. Glad you get to make progress again!

[lb_lee]

Mori: thanks! My goal is to have it done for SPX, which means I'm on a two illo a day inking regimen for a month. Woo!

[tuesday_morning]

I have to say that I love your art style. This might sound random, but I somehow feel encouraged to work on my own art style again after seeing this.

Also, definitely excited for Madgic #3 to release!

[lb_lee]

Thanks! We hope to have it out about a month from now. Ink, ink, ink!

Mori

[talewisefellowship]

[Janusz]

Looking forward to this new comic.

You have to completely frame the paneling around him, and the challenge is conveying through comics that it is HE who is BIG, not everyone else who is tiny.

This makes me think of the Lord of the Rings films and how in addition to all the camera trickery (and things like standing on a box out of frame), they also had scale doubles stand in for the actors in far shots, not just short doubles to play the hobbits, but also a very tall guy to stand in for Ian McKellen next to the actors who played the hobbits. After all, size is relative, Hobbits are small from the perspective of humans, but from the perspective of hobbits, humans are tall. Look up 'lord of the rings scale double' to see photos

(gandalf is technically a maia rather than a human but that's besides the point, he's human-sized)

Also, do you know why Rawlin has fur around his eyes? I've always been wondering that

[lb_lee]

Mori: it's due to the circumstances of his creation; his image got modeled off a species from a cheesy sci-fi romance novel from the '80s. It's why he's so fucking big too. The masks of fur were a thing.

Fun fact: he also wears very few clothes. His "suit" is mostly thick fur. It's really dense, enough so that I just realized he'd probably be uncomfortable wearing much more. But that's kind of weird to explain, so for Madgic I just draw him solid black, and probably people just assume it's a bodysuit and not 80% fur.

[talewisefellowship]

[Janusz]

Yeah that's what I assumed too lol. It makes sense that somebody with a lot of fur would not be comfortable wearing much clothes

[lb_lee]

Mori: yeah, he just runs around in trunks, gauntlets, boots, and harness. (No clue why he wears that last one. Maybe he just thinks it's cool?)

In the original romance novel, there's all this crap about the fur's texture being all velvety, but Rawlin's not cool enough, I guess. He just feels kinda like felt.

[talewisefellowship]

[Hikaru]

Man if I was covered in thick fur I'd do whatever it takes to stay cool, even if it means running around half naked lol. Especially in this weather!

[lb_lee]

Mori: yeah, Rawlin's done a lot of questionable things, but that ain't one of them. When you're wearing a woolly felt suit 24/7, I'm absolutely in favor of not melting in the heat.

[talewisefellowship]

[Hikaru]

Man, summer heat is the worst!!!

[talewisefellowship]

[Janusz]

This reminds me. I feel like I asked a question like this before, but does the headspace world have seasons? If not, does it resemble a particular season?

I think I asked you guys before if it had a day/night cycle but I don't really remember the answer.

[lb_lee]

Mori: back in the old idyllic days, it was always in full green, bright sunny days and mild temperatures. Then in its wasteland stage, it was just this kinda numb neutrality. Now it seems to KINDA be figuring itself out and trying to align weather? Like, it sometimes rains and snows, but the oak so far has stayed in full summer green. I'm not sure I'd call them full on seasons, though.

[talewisefellowship]

[Janusz]

That is really interesting, thanks for answering

[lb_lee]

Mori: coming back to say, recently our headspace had mild snow, despite consensus reality being in high summer. Grey had to bundle up for her morning run. No clue what that was about!

[talewisefellowship]

[Janusz]

That is really interesting, thanks for sharing!

Hopefully you find more about how the weather works there.

[stealthsystem]

Okay. This is gonna sound wild. But the way you describe Rawlin, he reminds me of this cheesey sci-fi novel I know... I wouldn't necessarily call it a romance but he seriously does.
It's this one and we spent a long depressive episode in college reading the first two books of the series.

[lb_lee]

Mori: Oh wow jeez you weren't joking, that... that sure is in the right ballpark.

...are the books any good?

[stealthsystem]

We REALLY enjoyed them. Heyoka's dad is Native American, and portrayed well. And the species is really nifty, too, and you get to meet a lot of them who weren't raised by humans. It's a very interesting set all round.

[lb_lee]

Mori: well crap, sounds like I'm going to hit the sci-fi library and check them out, then!

[stealthsystem]

Looks like it's out of print as an ebook. It was published in 1999. Please let us know how it goes finding those. :D

[lb_lee]

Well, libgen has ebooks, but it looks like Stars Over Stars is still in print!

There's a sci-fi/fantasy-only library here. For $20 a year, we can just walk in and load up on old paperbacks from our youth! It's not so great for brand new stuff, but if it's like more than twenty years old, your odds are really good! This sounds like exactly the kind of thing they'd have.

[we]

I don't think we've ever seen art of Rawlin, or at least I haven't. He's a lot different from how we expected him to look, that's for certain!

—V.

[lb_lee]

Mori: out of curiosity, how DID y'all expect him to look? People seem to get a very strong impression of him, more so than the rest of us. (Though at least one person thought Biff was tall, which is hilarious since he's built like a minifridge.)