Hey everyone,
After dropping you in the midst of a Lumeris feud between two underfamilies with last week's first Endless comics, we wanted to pull back the curtain a bit and show you how we got there. We hope you enjoyed the comics and that you're impatient to see what comes next! More on that at the end...
The first thing we had to decide on after laying out the plot was to decide on the atmosphere of the setting. To complement such a loaded meeting, fraught with tension and unspoken threat, going back to the dramatic roots of theater seemed natural. Therefore, we made the decision that our protagonists should wear full regalia: formal Lumeris costumes for the underbosses, traditional period costumes for the actors onstage.
Donna Madka Contanto, Don Rizo Acardi, Kaetra Acardi, Lucia Arrakyo
Next up were the actors themselves: because the angles on them would vary quite a bit, we needed characters that were starkly contrasted. We chose to go with male and female underbosses so that each one would be immediately identifiable by the reader. The female secondary characters, Lucia Arrakyo, Elanara Reyal the assassin, and Kaetra Acardi's lover in page 6 were a bit more difficult to differentiate since some of them appear abruptly into the narrative, and aren't seen for a while before reappearing. Thus the decision to characterize them with different hairstyles, and a mole for Elanara the assassin.
Once these concepts were set apart from each other, they needed to become characters in their own right, with motives and origins: the nod to Romeo & Juliet meant we had to have a tragic couple, which we tied in with the power struggle between families. The Arrakyo family was, at the time, the prominent family in Lumeris society, and with their tradition for politics and legislation, it meant sense for them to be the catalyst of this story. A family one rung below the top of the corporate ladder, trying to overreach, was all we needed to set the sequence in motion. Some say the repercussions of this story and the loss of the Arrakyo heiress were key to the rise to power of current Lumeris leader, Jenestra Omalfi'Meos. History books might tell, but then again, history is written by the winners, and in this tale there aren't any to be found...
Once we had the characters down, the comics progressed in four stages: storyboard, pencils, inking, greyscale, and finally, the faction's dominant color was added in solid color notes. Below is the pencil of the last page, so spoiler alert! Make sure you read the comics first if you haven't.
Those of you with an eye for detail, see if you can spot the 7 differences!
Moving from one step to the next often introduces minute changes, so here is a step-by-step of the dramatic showdown between Donna Madka and Lucia Arrakyo.
If you've made it all the way here, you're probably curious about what comes next. Here is the final cover for the United Empire comics, coming next week...
We can't wait to show it to you!
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