Darker and darker. Our huncback, locked in prison descends into depression. Marina has given him her ultimatum - his mother’s heart in exchange for her love. (Of course she’s just pissed - you don’t really expect Marina to hook up with the hunchback, do you?)
Spread 09 shows two story points yet again. The biggest challenge here was the light source streaming through the cell window. The visible light rays are caused by both dust and the rain breaking into the cell. It’s not convincing yet, but it isn’t done. As it is, all the images from Alamat ng Butiki posted so far are not final. In a later update to this spread I added more ambient light in the cell - thereby giving it a stronger sense of space. I also adjusted the perspective of the window to make it logical to show the corners of the cell.
Across the illustration of the cell is a smaller one describing how the hunchback is able to escape. In the thumbnails, this illustration is simply boxed in like a comic book panel. But in this update I added a pacing device by having the hunchback tiptoe out of the panel. Interestingly, it serves as a bit of comic relief. KIDS are gonna be reading this, comic relief is necessary!!
For now the images I’ve been posting from Alamat ng Butiki offer the foundation by which the final illustration will be built. Any storytelling devices that enter my mind are applied - something the digital medium allows quite easily. The goal is that we learn these lessons and techniques as we work so that we can apply them at the thumbnail stage. But if you force yourself to follow your approved studies, you will shun applying ideas that come to you while you work!
Spread 10 shows two plot points. The hunchback heads home to embrace mother, and the hunchback guts her heart out. You don’t see the latter happening, it’s R-rated! But the knife in the chopping board gives you an idea. Literally it shows a reflection of the dastardly deed, figuratively it shows a moment frozen in time that we aren’t supposed to have the kiddies see. Perhaps the most gruesome spread, so you can see the dripping purple guck around the top.
Now I’m not sure if it’s just my paranoia, but some people may get the impression that there’s something incestuous going on in the first illustration. After all there is a big heart form, and the colors are all steamy. I wanted to bring in the idea that man’s love can been perverted and twisted - the underlying premise in this story (aside from the obvious point that a lizard has to be result of all this.). Love for mother been twisted to hate, a love that murders, romantic love for a woman who belongs to someone else. No incest intended.
The study for this controversial illustration included a headless chicken along with the knife. According to the story ,the mother was about to cook her son’s favorite meal before she had her life snuffed out. I thought the headless hen and a knife stuck in it would be the perfect metaphor for the mother’s murder. (Won’t be the same if it were a fish.) But it didn’t sit well with Lampara, the publisher. Oh well, at least I don’t have to illustrate dead chicken.
Probably the most challenging concern in spread 10 is the fabric. Upon researching the fashion of the day, I decided to add a little more textural interest to the mother;s clothes and give it a more Filipino look as well.
First the mother’s gown was painted. Then the fabrics she wore on top of that gown were placed on separate layers set to Normal. I used a textured brush to paint down the semi-transparent shawl that she wears around her neck and used a mask to tailor how the lights stikes it. Additional painting was required to render the color accurately and to place the patterns.
The color pallette for these spreads is slowly turning cold - making you flip the pages hoping for a warm ending!
