Jon Cairns
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Wilfrith and the Golem Stonemason - 25
🕑 Added 2024-02-23 10:00:02 +0000 UTCThis page had a lot of very challenges. Wordless communication between five characters is a strong ask for a single page, so I had to balance a lot of factors here. Starting with the roughs I was trying to keep an eye on the scale of the figures. Wilfrith needs to feel very much concretely smaller than everyone else on the page, and the loom needs to be massive enough to look like it’s worked by 8 foot tall people.
(Page 25, digital roughs from Wilfrith and the Golem Stonemason)
You can definitely see me worrying there with my scale concerns note. I called the rough finished at this stage, figuring I’d solve the problems in inks.
I was also really insecure about my loom. I had previously modeled it for the beginning of the comic, so I knew I could get it right, but I’d have to find a specific silhouette where all of the figures would be visible through it while it’s also imposing.
(Loom, Blender screenshot of 3D model built for Wilfrith and the Golem Stonemason)
(Loom, Blender render of a 3D model built for Wilfrith and the Golem Stonemason)
I was really happy to have my loom model on hand; they’re such complicated things—and I’m sure when I was inventing my own, referenced across a bunch of different real life loom photos, that I got bits mechanically wrong—but I feel like the preparation at this level gave the drawings of it a lot of verisimilitude.
(Page 25, digital inks from Wilfrith and the Golem Stonemason)
In the first panel here, I feel like I did some perspective and rendering stunts. I was really proud of the beam coming forward towards the viewer as both a design element and a drawing. And how Wilfrith and the female golem could fit into the perspective with their crouches.
I was so burned out with design by the time it was to color the tapestry on the loom. A tapestry on the loom is such an incredibly detailed area of world building. A tapestry can take a decade to weave, so knowing that I feel like you kinda have to justify its production with a strong visual so I gave it a lot more lines in the colors than I had time budget for.
