I listened to a song called Enemies to Lovers while trying to drop off to sleep and got the most vivid visual of Mitzi and Antonia having a sword fight. And Mitzi holding a sword got me thinking about that DND universe Ben designed with me this year. And then I started redesigning the DND fantasy universe, but outside of the structural and formal limitations of actual dungeons and dragons. More like… a campaign but also just a plot.
I was gonna draw Mitzi realising her sword could talk, and started thumbnailing that.
But you can see I didn’t know what the sword looked like, and this sword happens to be a priceless royal heirloom of mysterious origin that can talk (but only to people of the royal bloodline). So… its design was pretty frickin important. The task of the day changed! We begin to design swords!
I must say this process was hugely fun and also felt flooby. I had images in my head that I tried to get out, and then bounced off of those, and bounced off of reference images – the process of image generation was just so organic and fuelled by genuine passion.
Jamie even helped me at the end: he’s a boy, he’s bisexual, ergo he knows a lot about swords. This is no euphemism: there’s something about fruity boys and sword knowledge. Maybe that’s just Freddie and Jamie, actually. Anyway. Together, we talked about how the sword would look, and we came up with this coloured one on the bottom panel as the working final design.
Of course, it can change, but now I have a real shape and feel to work with when I next draw Mitzi. Designing these elements – almost fashion, or props – is giving me a LOT of good feelings.
Also, in case you are interested, here are the words.
SEASIDE ILLUSTRATION 