"The Call of Change" - Illustration by JodTheCod · 6:05pm Oct 24th, 2023
I couldn't be sure that answering that call was the right thing to do there and then. I could only feel like I absolutely needed to move forward with my life in some way shape or form, even if I had to, in this case quite literally, move backward to meet my fate dead on. I was more or less ready to challenge destiny. Walking down those first steps to the mouth of an unnervingly dark and familiar cave, I was filled with uncharacteristic confidence.
If a person's life could be read like a book, I wonder what it would say about me and my kind?
What would it say about Twilight and her friends?
For whom was that story meant for? Of course, I knew the answer to that. With a big smile and overwhelming pride in my chest, I yelled into the cave with all that I could muster my unspoken farewell to every soul that had helped shape my life.
"For everyone's sake!"
Level with me for a moment. For long, long swaths of time, I'll get certain scenes in a movie, show, or book stuck in my head. It'll repeat often and without warning. And when I say a long time, I mean months. Years even. Like a song stuck in your head but ten times worse and ten times as long-lived. I'll think and I'll think and I'll think on it. Sometimes without meaning to, like a daydream just popping up unannounced. Sometimes, I'll do so purposefully, and focus all my thoughts on that one scene. I'll take those scenes to their logical conclusions. I'll twist them. Reinvent them. Play on them. Dream on them. And this happens so many times, over such a long period of time up until a new scene gets stuck in my head, like a slot that always needs to be filled by something or other. So now we come to this scene, this drawing. A moment in my story I've thought about so much in my mind. And now it will live longer thanks to JodTheCod's wonderful illustration.
It is a rarity for anything of my own creation to get stuck in my own head. Usually those sticky thoughts come from other properties, and other mediums. If you've read my stories, I'm terrible at world-building and scene writing. Or well, not horrible, but it doesn't come natural to my style and so what I write has no real staying power in my head. That slot has traditionally been occupied by any other property. So it's a very special thing for me to have taken to this moment. So long it's been in my head, I've had it since I wrote it. This illustration depicts the moment in A Kindled Change when Chrys unlocks her power for the first time and answers the siren call of her destiny, her Fate. The final few paragraphs of Chapter 8: Unspoken Farewell. A chapter that was written back in August 2022. It's been a literal year and then some!
And now's the time to talk about the art piece created by Jod! I needed to talk about all of that first to give you guys a good idea of how VITAL I felt I needed to see this moment illustrated. I had an unspoken rule of just one illustration per chapter on A Kindled Change and that one already had an illustration beforehand, but honestly, Chapter 8 just had the most oomph for me and it's lived so long in my head, I felt I just had to. And I couldn't just waste Jod's amazing work on the slower chapters once I finally did have the chance to commission him. And I'm really, really glad that he did this for me, since it's honestly amazing!
The most stand-out thing about Jod's illustration was definitely the composition of this whole thing. While I was the one to give the direction for it, Jod was the one who made it come to life truly. The foreboding maw of the cave that looks and feels like a giant monster... The glow of her newly adopted magic struggling to light her way... And lastly, the darkness that she had lived her whole life in. A pitch black cage that she had dreaded nearly every waking moment within it... These were all things that wouldn't have worked nearly as well in any other artist's hands. I tried to get a few to depict the kind of darkness I wanted to see from the cave, but none except Jod were able to. Partly because that level of darkness needed to be contrasted well against the other colors that made up the composition. This works particularly well because of Chrys trying to light the way with her magic.
There's a famous painting that works nicely to explain the kind of effect that this type of composition has to heighten the feelings and emotions it invokes by the usage of lighting, posing, and angles. Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich. The perspective of that painting does wonders to heighten the sense of awe and majesty we're meant to be feeling from it. We tend to look up towards the Wanderer in that piece, and with the backdrop, he looks larger than life itself thanks to the focal point aiding to his presence. I know it's all very fancy and technical talk, but it bears talking about, since a lot of it applies to this piece.
Opposite to what Friedrich did in Wanderer, but with similar principles of perspective, Chrys being the focal point and having her be a small portion of the drawing has her sharing the attention with the dark and ominous Cave. And that contrast works especially well to heighten the effect we wanted which was to portray that sense of unease when looking down into its pitch black darkness. The light exuding from her horn does help to contrast that effect further, but it has a multi-purpose in the way that it is also meant to invoke a sense of small hope. Like a flickering, tiny flame in a snowstorm, it's meant to show that there's a lingering hope still attached to Chrys. That by doing this, she can move forward with her life. And if not, then at least she would have saved those she'd come to care about. Or love, in the case of Twilight.
This has been the most precise and analytical I've been about a piece, but again, I've thought about this moment for so long, and I can see just how well Jod did to make it so... Stand Out-ish! It's fantastic. That's not even mention just how well his cell-shading/coloring affects my brain. It's tiny details, again, but they work so well and certainly something I wouldn't think about if I were to draw this scene myself. Like the upper lip of the cave being illuminated by the magic for example. The tiny motes surrounding her horn. The tree roots hugging the outer edges of the entrance. The line work that makes it feel almost like a comic book... It's just so aesthetically pleasing to my eye.
I am very big into art. Probably too much for my own good. But if you shared any of my opinions or just my general opinion that this piece is awesome, then do consider showing JodTheCod some love for his amazing work!
That's it for me for now. Until next time!
Sometimes (like right now), I'll have a future scene from one of my stories stuck in my head for a while, so I get what you mean!
The artwork is a fond reminder of what went down in that chapter and I'm all for it. It helps a ton that it is a lovely piece.
Cool
As a fellow visual, I can sign under every word
The texture is there, and it's palpable, like you can really almost trace your fingers on it. Truly an outstanding piece. Not to say that the scene of a figure standing against the darkness, both real and metaphorical, is carrying a strong and relatable message in itself.