Page 1, Inked

Well, I got the first page of our constrained fantasy story done within the one-week deadline. I think the story's off to an interesting start, and I hope that I've suggested an interesting world with all of these passersby in the Bazaar.

I'll try to color this image before long, but the coloring can lag behind schedule a little bit, as long as we get the inks done on time. (Only the black-and-white pages will be submitted to Elfworld.)

Here are my results. You can click to enlarge the image. I've deliberately saved it at postcard size (at least for my monitor), so all of you can't-fit-that-on-a-postcard naysayers can judge whether the four-tier plan worked out. (The postcards will be printed at better resolution than a laptop monitor, though, so they should be more legible.)

I'm pretty happy with the way I responded to two of the constraints. Stepan, our protagonist, definitely spends most of this page as an "audience" to the little scenes around him, and the seven ages of man are represented in seven equal-sized panels that hew pretty closely to the types mentioned in Jacques's famous speech: the infant, the schoolboy, the lover, the soldlier, the justice, the pantaloon, and the shriveled old man. I like the way that Charles's constraints suggested a macguffin for this story: I sent Stepan looking for a very old man, because the old man was at the end of Jacques's speech.

I'm not as happy with the way I responded to the "Reverse Corrigan" constraint, to tell you the truth. It wasn't until I had inked about half of the page that I realized that Charles wanted every character's facial expression visible (except for the protagonist's). I think there are five or six people in the backgrounds and margins whose faces can't be seen—or maybe even more than that. If you like, you can think of them as props or set-dressing, instead of characters, but that's sort of a lame excuse. Sorry, Charles—I messed up (but only a little).

I now pass the baton to Mike, who has to continue the story and satisfy the remaining two constraints. Good luck, buddy!