machines of freedom: illustrator's notes
Illustrator's notes for amalnahurriyeh's Machines of Freedom, done for the xf_bigbang 2009.
OK
THERE ARE MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR THE FANFIC BELOW
READ THE NOTES AFTER YOU READ THE FANFIC
I'M NOT KIDDING
FO SRS
RLY RLY
...OK YOU'VE BEEN WARNED ENOUGH.
Little Sadie is based on a real life niece of Amal's, the photos of which she kindly (and proudly) supplied. Having zero recent experience with children under 8 (or with kids' Cinderella dresses, for that matter), I still had to look for reference on Getty. ("How big exactly is a three-year-old, dammit" "Oh man they can be big" "Oh lol, look at the teeth" "Haha CHILDREN ARE FUNNY.") Yes, I do fail that much.
Poor Scully is so troubled in all these drawings of mine, haha! But what can I do! Amal wrote it that way.
On a more serious note, I couldn’t even start to imagine how hard it was for Scully to have another baby, how guilty and broken she felt about her son every time she saw her new daughter. I found the flashback fragment heartbreaking.
William was a pretty easy job. I drew him more Scully-like (freckles, eyes, Pilot hair) but I fear the nose is definitely going to be “unfortunate” when he grows some more. Sorry, kid.
Drawing Casey earlier in the story was a pretty tough case. She had to look like her parents, but not be too identical to either of them - after all, no one recognized her. (In both these early drawings I put her hair on her face to further obscure her true identity to the viewer - cheap, I know. But it works!)
This was one of the things I knew instantly I’d draw right after I read them. I’ve always really wanted to draw a photo like this, and was happy to do it as an illustration for a fic. Of course, making it broke my heart, just like the Mulder/baby William sketch I’d done for Amal’s earlier fic from the same universe as “Machines of Freedom” (“Five Times Mosely Drummy Wishes He’d Never Met Fox Mulder”). I just never got over the OH SOB HE NEVER REALLY GOT TO BE A DADDY phase, I think.
Little detail no one cares about: the baby book is open on the sink bath photo and the pumpkin costume photo that are mentioned in the fic.
In real/non-fandom life I make comics, so I thought it would be fun to put parts of dialogue in some of the illustrations, too. I generally dislike word balloons when I make comics, and tend to make words flow around the character, hence the format you can see in this project.
The tank in the background is an M1 Abrams. Not that anyone cares. But they’re kind of awesome.
I probably had even less knowledge about sports with bats in them than Amal, so again Getty came helpful, bearing baseball gloves. You and your sports, America!
(MULDER DESTROY! Hilarious author trivia: yes, I am one of those people who act out the faces their characters make while drawing them. It is 1. apparently artistically helpful for my stupid brain, 2. subconscious, 3. unmanageable, and 4. the main reason why I avoid drawing in public places.)
And now about the drawing itself. Well, it was pretty problematic for me; Mulder blindly attacks a woman, which is a big no-no by my standards. Drawing this was harder than I’d imagined, quite unpleasant, and therefore challenging. I’m happy with how it came out. I think I managed to convey the drama and the discomfort.
About Casey’s tattoo. Snickering like the mad scientists that we are, Amal and I agreed on an Easter egg snake motif. I proposed the design to be something vaguely Celtic (another Easter egg - hello, ancestry), after some talk Amal agreed, and then I went on to design it. We did want it to be tacky (in Amal’s words, “celtic snake works well for ‘walked into tattoo place, decided to pick up tattoo girl, um this one here, sure, what's your name, mine's Casey’”), but it came out SO ostentatiously lame that we agreed on covering it partially with a sleeve. There are limits, you know.
As it often happens, my favorite illustration is the one I spent the least time on: Mo, Mulder and Sadie in the bunker. I like its atmosphere, especially the colors (PSSST: it’s the old trick with the navy blue layer set on Exclusion!). I like things that are messy and sketchy, probably because I lack the patience and skill to make the lineart neat, pretty and easily colorable.
I modeled Casey after Scully, which is probably pretty noticeable. She has her mom’s mimics and face shape, but her dad’s hair and mouth.
Casey was Amal’s favorite, while I initially rooted for William; for me, 2012 was always about the magic supersoldier canon kid saving the day. But I’m a kind person and I wanted to make Amal happy and give her at least two drawings of adult Casey. And so, as I started modeling the character and then inked and colored her portraits for several hours (days!), I found that once I gave her a face and spent so much time with her, I grew to like her very much. She’s insanely brave and crazy and smart and awesome; I understand why Amal loves her so much. (Also, she’s a linguist like me, so, come on, what’s not to love?)
I love how history repeats itself in the universe Amal created. About thirty years of Mulder’s life was a tragic quest to find and save his sister; his loss, her absence, determined a huge part of who he was. And then his absence, his daughter’s loss, made his daughter repeat his life, spend almost all her time and energy to bring back a loved one she’d lost. And I think she was even braver than Mulder back in the day; unlike him, she knew for certain the one she was looking for was already dead. She went to him like Orpheus went to Euridice. Drawing the moment when she blurts out “I don’t remember you,” the one-sentence essence of why saving him is such an important thing in her life, I tried to show the emotions she kept hidden during her whole stay in 2012 (and if she’s anything like her mom, probably during her whole life). And what finally breaks my heart is that Casey goes all that way to save her dad for an AU version of herself, so practically for someone else.
A follow-up piece, a kind of a visual epilogue from me, with the lyrics of one of my fav singers/songwriters Joanna Newsom. “Sadie” (listen to it @ Youtube!), a piece which Amal didn’t know but which is so eerily in alignment with the universe she created. Mulder would like that.
Here are the full lyrics:
Sadie
White coat
You carry me home
And bury this bone
And take this pinecone
Bury this bone
To gnaw on it later, gnawing on the telephone
And 'till then, we pray and suspend
The notion that these lives do never end
And all day long we talk about mercy
Lead me to water Lord, I sure am thirsty
Down in the ditch where I nearly served you
Up in the clouds where he almost heard you
And all that we built
And all that we breathed
And all that we spilt
Or pulled up like weeds
Is piled up in back
And it burns irrevocably
And we spoke up in turns
'Till the silence crept over me
And bless you
And I deeply do
No longer resolute
Oh, and I call to you
But the water go so cold
And you do lose
What you don't hold
This is an old song
These are old blues
And this is not my tune
But it's mine to use
And the seabirds
Where the fear once grew
Will flock with a fury
And they will bury
What'd come for you
And down where I darn with the milk-eyed mender
You and I, and a love so tender
Stretched on the hoop where I stitch this addage
"Bless our house and its heart so savage."
And all that I want
And all that I need
And all that I got
Is scattered like seed
And all that I knew
Is moving away from me
And all that I know
Is blowing like tumbleweed
And the mealy worms
In the brine will burn
In a salty pyre
Among the fauns and ferns
And the love we hold
And the love we spurn
Will never grow cold
Oh, only taciturn
And I'll tell you tomorrow
Oh Sadie, go on home now
And bless those who've sickened below
And bless us who have chosen so
And all that I got
And all that I need
I tie in a knot
And I lay at your feet
And I have not forgot
But a silence crept over me
So dig up your bone
Exhume your pinecone, Sadie
See? EERIE AND AWESOME.
To sum up: this was the biggest fandom project I’ve drawn so far - I’ve never made any fic more than one illustration - and I was really happy to have the opportunity. Working on this with Amal was a blast. She readily provided me with supplementary material and backstories, answered any additional questions, and generally seemed as excited (and anal, which is a very, very good thing in Scoolyland) about it as I was. We exchanged like five thousand emails and I probably drove her insane with changing and correcting the drawing all the time and sending her new URLs every ten seconds (“No wait, this one’s final!”). But as I said, I had a blast.
And on a final ending note, if anyone cares for stuff like that, my playlist for the illustration process was: massive amounts of Regina Spektor, Zbigniew Preisner’s soundtrack for “Trois Couleurs: Bleu”, and Mark Snow’s soundtrack for “I Want to Believe”. And Joanna Newsom of course, with “Sadie” practically on loop most of the time.
OK
THERE ARE MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR THE FANFIC BELOW
READ THE NOTES AFTER YOU READ THE FANFIC
I'M NOT KIDDING
FO SRS
RLY RLY
...OK YOU'VE BEEN WARNED ENOUGH.
Little Sadie is based on a real life niece of Amal's, the photos of which she kindly (and proudly) supplied. Having zero recent experience with children under 8 (or with kids' Cinderella dresses, for that matter), I still had to look for reference on Getty. ("How big exactly is a three-year-old, dammit" "Oh man they can be big" "Oh lol, look at the teeth" "Haha CHILDREN ARE FUNNY.") Yes, I do fail that much.
Poor Scully is so troubled in all these drawings of mine, haha! But what can I do! Amal wrote it that way.
On a more serious note, I couldn’t even start to imagine how hard it was for Scully to have another baby, how guilty and broken she felt about her son every time she saw her new daughter. I found the flashback fragment heartbreaking.
William was a pretty easy job. I drew him more Scully-like (freckles, eyes, Pilot hair) but I fear the nose is definitely going to be “unfortunate” when he grows some more. Sorry, kid.
Drawing Casey earlier in the story was a pretty tough case. She had to look like her parents, but not be too identical to either of them - after all, no one recognized her. (In both these early drawings I put her hair on her face to further obscure her true identity to the viewer - cheap, I know. But it works!)
This was one of the things I knew instantly I’d draw right after I read them. I’ve always really wanted to draw a photo like this, and was happy to do it as an illustration for a fic. Of course, making it broke my heart, just like the Mulder/baby William sketch I’d done for Amal’s earlier fic from the same universe as “Machines of Freedom” (“Five Times Mosely Drummy Wishes He’d Never Met Fox Mulder”). I just never got over the OH SOB HE NEVER REALLY GOT TO BE A DADDY phase, I think.
Little detail no one cares about: the baby book is open on the sink bath photo and the pumpkin costume photo that are mentioned in the fic.
In real/non-fandom life I make comics, so I thought it would be fun to put parts of dialogue in some of the illustrations, too. I generally dislike word balloons when I make comics, and tend to make words flow around the character, hence the format you can see in this project.
The tank in the background is an M1 Abrams. Not that anyone cares. But they’re kind of awesome.
I probably had even less knowledge about sports with bats in them than Amal, so again Getty came helpful, bearing baseball gloves. You and your sports, America!
(MULDER DESTROY! Hilarious author trivia: yes, I am one of those people who act out the faces their characters make while drawing them. It is 1. apparently artistically helpful for my stupid brain, 2. subconscious, 3. unmanageable, and 4. the main reason why I avoid drawing in public places.)
And now about the drawing itself. Well, it was pretty problematic for me; Mulder blindly attacks a woman, which is a big no-no by my standards. Drawing this was harder than I’d imagined, quite unpleasant, and therefore challenging. I’m happy with how it came out. I think I managed to convey the drama and the discomfort.
About Casey’s tattoo. Snickering like the mad scientists that we are, Amal and I agreed on an Easter egg snake motif. I proposed the design to be something vaguely Celtic (another Easter egg - hello, ancestry), after some talk Amal agreed, and then I went on to design it. We did want it to be tacky (in Amal’s words, “celtic snake works well for ‘walked into tattoo place, decided to pick up tattoo girl, um this one here, sure, what's your name, mine's Casey’”), but it came out SO ostentatiously lame that we agreed on covering it partially with a sleeve. There are limits, you know.
As it often happens, my favorite illustration is the one I spent the least time on: Mo, Mulder and Sadie in the bunker. I like its atmosphere, especially the colors (PSSST: it’s the old trick with the navy blue layer set on Exclusion!). I like things that are messy and sketchy, probably because I lack the patience and skill to make the lineart neat, pretty and easily colorable.
I modeled Casey after Scully, which is probably pretty noticeable. She has her mom’s mimics and face shape, but her dad’s hair and mouth.
Casey was Amal’s favorite, while I initially rooted for William; for me, 2012 was always about the magic supersoldier canon kid saving the day. But I’m a kind person and I wanted to make Amal happy and give her at least two drawings of adult Casey. And so, as I started modeling the character and then inked and colored her portraits for several hours (days!), I found that once I gave her a face and spent so much time with her, I grew to like her very much. She’s insanely brave and crazy and smart and awesome; I understand why Amal loves her so much. (Also, she’s a linguist like me, so, come on, what’s not to love?)
I love how history repeats itself in the universe Amal created. About thirty years of Mulder’s life was a tragic quest to find and save his sister; his loss, her absence, determined a huge part of who he was. And then his absence, his daughter’s loss, made his daughter repeat his life, spend almost all her time and energy to bring back a loved one she’d lost. And I think she was even braver than Mulder back in the day; unlike him, she knew for certain the one she was looking for was already dead. She went to him like Orpheus went to Euridice. Drawing the moment when she blurts out “I don’t remember you,” the one-sentence essence of why saving him is such an important thing in her life, I tried to show the emotions she kept hidden during her whole stay in 2012 (and if she’s anything like her mom, probably during her whole life). And what finally breaks my heart is that Casey goes all that way to save her dad for an AU version of herself, so practically for someone else.
A follow-up piece, a kind of a visual epilogue from me, with the lyrics of one of my fav singers/songwriters Joanna Newsom. “Sadie” (listen to it @ Youtube!), a piece which Amal didn’t know but which is so eerily in alignment with the universe she created. Mulder would like that.
Here are the full lyrics:
Sadie
White coat
You carry me home
And bury this bone
And take this pinecone
Bury this bone
To gnaw on it later, gnawing on the telephone
And 'till then, we pray and suspend
The notion that these lives do never end
And all day long we talk about mercy
Lead me to water Lord, I sure am thirsty
Down in the ditch where I nearly served you
Up in the clouds where he almost heard you
And all that we built
And all that we breathed
And all that we spilt
Or pulled up like weeds
Is piled up in back
And it burns irrevocably
And we spoke up in turns
'Till the silence crept over me
And bless you
And I deeply do
No longer resolute
Oh, and I call to you
But the water go so cold
And you do lose
What you don't hold
This is an old song
These are old blues
And this is not my tune
But it's mine to use
And the seabirds
Where the fear once grew
Will flock with a fury
And they will bury
What'd come for you
And down where I darn with the milk-eyed mender
You and I, and a love so tender
Stretched on the hoop where I stitch this addage
"Bless our house and its heart so savage."
And all that I want
And all that I need
And all that I got
Is scattered like seed
And all that I knew
Is moving away from me
And all that I know
Is blowing like tumbleweed
And the mealy worms
In the brine will burn
In a salty pyre
Among the fauns and ferns
And the love we hold
And the love we spurn
Will never grow cold
Oh, only taciturn
And I'll tell you tomorrow
Oh Sadie, go on home now
And bless those who've sickened below
And bless us who have chosen so
And all that I got
And all that I need
I tie in a knot
And I lay at your feet
And I have not forgot
But a silence crept over me
So dig up your bone
Exhume your pinecone, Sadie
See? EERIE AND AWESOME.
To sum up: this was the biggest fandom project I’ve drawn so far - I’ve never made any fic more than one illustration - and I was really happy to have the opportunity. Working on this with Amal was a blast. She readily provided me with supplementary material and backstories, answered any additional questions, and generally seemed as excited (and anal, which is a very, very good thing in Scoolyland) about it as I was. We exchanged like five thousand emails and I probably drove her insane with changing and correcting the drawing all the time and sending her new URLs every ten seconds (“No wait, this one’s final!”). But as I said, I had a blast.
And on a final ending note, if anyone cares for stuff like that, my playlist for the illustration process was: massive amounts of Regina Spektor, Zbigniew Preisner’s soundtrack for “Trois Couleurs: Bleu”, and Mark Snow’s soundtrack for “I Want to Believe”. And Joanna Newsom of course, with “Sadie” practically on loop most of the time.