"Makings of a Hero" - Illustration by DamayantiArts, for The Boy, The Sword, and The Stone · 6:40pm Jul 13th, 2023
In this blog, I’ll be talking about the beautiful art my wonderful friend Dama did for this story. You can find her work here if you wish to express your thoughts to her directly about it.
Now where to start... First, let me just gush about it for a bit. If anyone is following along with all the pieces I talk about, Damayanti should now be a name they recognize. She has been an absolute gem to work with, and has become a real friend to me. Personal biases aside, her art continues to amaze me at every turn. This is ontop of working closely with her to structure the scene, so you would think that I wouldn’t be so surprised by the finished product despite knowing exactly what it was supposed to be in the end. But here I am again, floored by the sheer majesty of her art.
The lighting, the reflection, the smoke, the characters! Purposely or accidentally, Dama managed to create a beautiful encapsulation and feeling of a fabled storybook aesthetic. A fairytale atmosphere, if I borrow from Forcalor’s lovely comment on the story. My eye for art is still not trained enough to tell the kind of technical nuances that need to go to create such a thing, but if I were to guess at it, I think what gives me that vibe is in the very subtle grated texturing of the water and fog which feels like its drawn with a traditional brush (even an emulated one from digital paintings goes a long way with that). That, plus the lighting which gives Pipsqueak a wonderful little sheen and glow which makes him stand out more goes a long way. Talking about art theory, Pip’s glow and the darkened borders does a wonderful job of drawing attention to the focal point which is the center of this piece.Which I mention because I almost missed the wooden sword in the tree! It’s a very special thing to have a piece of art that has me looking at it for a long time admiring it only for me to miss something despite all my careful consideration.
From here, I wanted to talk about the ideas Dama and I had for this one. Because I know that they’re very obscure since my brain works in a funny way. It’s the equivalent of telling a joke and ruining it, but maybe some of you might appreciate being told outright!
Symbolism! If you’ve read the story, maybe you have a good sense for what it’s all supposed to mean, right? Pip feels distraught over his circumstances, and a story about his heroic ancestor from a wise-old rock helps him cheer up. There was no actual ghost in the story, so the image shown in the picture is of Pint-size’s memory giving Pip the heart to soldier on. As for the water’s reflection, it’s easy to see what we intended there after all is said and done. Ya know, I’m always tossing symbolic gestures for Dama to work around which always makes me feel a bit bad because they are things that likely won’t get noticed too often and just amount to extra work for her. But Dama is always accommodating anything I pitch her. If I had to rate her as a person, it’d be an 11 out of a possible 5.
Details! The pond is filled with magic, and it lies within a notorious and naturally growing forest. So we opted for a fog. Very much Dama’s vision and a stellar one at that!
And characters. Probably the most fun talk about with Dama since she was brimming with awesome ideas. Let’s get the most obvious one out of the way... Dama’s Pipsqueak design is omega cute. Good lord he’s adorable. I mean just look at the little guy! Fantastic. Moving on to Pintsize. I recognize he’s not so easy to see thanks to the effects we wanted to incorporate for this piece, so here’s our concept design so you can get a better picture:
We obviously wanted him to look a lot like Pipsqueak but with his own original design. And Dama was able to create exactly that! She was the one who came up with his outfit’s design which is themed after a really cool character in the Tangled animated show, and thanks to her I found a new show to sit down and enjoy. It has some amazing music, on par if not better than the movie. I think the only real influence I had with him was the viking braid. Looks cool, no? Dama also managed to add more to his unique design with his mane, which we wanted to keep as similarly unkempt as Pipsqueaks. Such subtle, small things but they go a long way!
I also wanted to mention the intent of this story, and my plans going forward into the future with it. I mentioned it in the comments, but this was made almost purely to world-build, since I wanted to make a story with Pipsqueak in the same universe as Chrys. So if you caught some very minor details within the story, you’ll find some familiarity with the places and character mentioned. That’s all I’ll say about that for now.
Anywho, ciao for now! I hoped you enjoyed that small story and the wonderful artwork to go along with it.
Dama is very lovely, her art, ideas and designs, conjured nothing but sensation of wonder, just like your work and its atmosphere
And you can cite me on this too
Very pleasant!