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mleiv โ The Locked Maze 3: Page 1
Published: 2010-08-08 20:20:57 +0000 UTC; Views: 5741; Favourites: 123; Downloads: 52
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My average file size for book II was 50MB. Book III? 150MB. Urgh. My poor little thumb drive is not going to be able to hold all of these files. :/And can I just say, I know my vacation between books was very short, but it is very strange drawing Holly and crew again. I had to pull out the character sheets. I feel a bit like I'm starting from scratch. Hrmmmph.
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Comments: 62
Thank you! It is the poster I seem to sell the most of. I dunno if I'll ever manage to create a page as good as it again, but I will certainly try. ^^
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You're welcome. I'm sure you can again!
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Oh my things of personal import.
Maybe it felt strange because while the background is astoundingly realistic, the characters are rather cartoonish? I just cannot believe the things you can do. You're so versatile! And was there a reference photo for this?
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About 20 photos, ha. 
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I can understand that- black would have made it look subterranean. This white gives it a clouded, lacy look, like fog... or mist off the waterfall. Great incorporation of the different elements! Even the solid trees look like part of the water.
MY GOSH I JUST LOVE IT SO MUCH
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This page is really very striking... the intricate design of the trees and water as well as the color scheme are wonderful. What do you use to color these?
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Thank you. I use Adobe Photoshop (and lots and lots of layers).
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Now this is really impressing scenery.
It really puts me in mind of Ivan Bilibin's work, for me the only way to illustrate fairytales... (that's the stuff I grew up on, you see)
Love the comic so far. Got here by an amazingly lucky stroke of lateral linking and I'm definitely staying.
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Wow, thanks for the ref - I probably read his work as a kid too: I LOVED Russian fairy tales. Baba Yaga and Mother Holly (where my Holly got her name) were my favorite fairy tales ever. Gorgeous work, I so want to draw more like that, and I am so flattered at the comparison.
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You are far too modest.
The comparison is only fair, because you really are that good.
Mother Holly would be the witch from Lloyd Alexander's "How the Cat Swallowed Thunder", am I right?
My favourite fairytale ever was "Vasilisa the Beautiful", of course illustrated by Ivan Bilibin, which cast Baba Yaga as a sympathetic character rather than the standard wicked which in the western folklore. Sure, you have to pass a trial to assure her help and the penalty for failure is severe (death usually is) but once you accomplish her quest you can rely on her lending a hand (or a glowing skull on a stick, which in this case amounts to the same thing).
In the end it's just the way these characters are portrayed that matters - we are used to seeing them simply as misguided, evil humans, whereas they should be viewed more like "forces of nature". They exist isolated from ordinary people, and while encountering them can be bad for you, you will only come to grief if you encroach on their rules, on their territory.
Also, I loved the hut with chicken legs. Even now, I still want one.
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I haven't read Lloyd Alexander in too long to know, sorry. :/ Have you read Mignola's Hellboy? I know his Baba Yaga is evil (but, I mean, ALL his fairy people all evil), but the attention to detail on the folklore is just amazing. He mentions Lamia - who does that, apart from dry academic scholars?
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Actually, I haven't, since I'm not at all big on American Comics, but maybe I will in the future.
As far as Lamia is concerned, there were the Pre-Raphaelites who were pretty fond of her, especially John William Waterhouse. It's how I learned of her, actually.
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Really beautiful page. Strangely (and having nothing to do with the plot- which is also wonderful-), this matches almost exactly an image in my head from a story of mine. Which feels a little surreal, since it is thematically completely different.
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Thank you. I have a lot of influences like that.
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Wow, fantastic work
This is beautiful!
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o.o o loved the way you work this page, the bg looks amazing!!!
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Yeah, I have a tough time with backgrounds.
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Wow, didn't realize the scale in the preview page. It's a lot bigger place than I realized.
Looks like they had a rough trip!
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Yeah, I didn't do so well on the scale. I kinda wanted the trees on the far bank to bigger and the ferns on the near bank smaller. Oh well, WAY too much work to fix it now...
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No worries, it looks fantastic, both in overall awesomeness and in the sense that it looks very other-worldly. Win-win!
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Page one, Book III: Hurray!
It's beautiful, but I told you so already...it's great with the characters in.
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Thanks. I just added a poster print to the one without the characters. It felt pretty epic all on its own. Holly is just cluttering up the joint, ha!
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So to get to the magical world one has to nearly drown?
A very good thing to know.
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Doesn't that show up in Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series? I know it was in the Disney movie. I figure there are three ways to get there: the fairy circle (Book I), the moonlit path, and the nearly drowning. I'm sure if the first two had been available, soggy Anna and Jack would have selected them instead.
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Thank you my dear for inspiring me to look up Alexander Lloyd on wiki, finding a great deal of information about him and now wanting to read those very books.
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They are what inspired me to learn Welsh.
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Eeee!! So looking forward to seeing what happens next. This is just gorgeous btw.
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I hate putting down a project for a long period of time. I dread picking up from where I left off, knowing I'm going to be rusty as anything. A beautiful pic, and I know I sound like a broken record, but I do so love the trees.
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Yeah. People always say bicycle, blah blah blah. Not true. Even a week away means that it is a huge effort to sink myself back in a project, versus say, watching tv and drinking to forget my job. Which I guess is so easy because I DO IT ALL THE TIME. 
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It's funny; seeing Holly and co. entering the (for want of a better word) Court makes me wonder... they seem so modern and out of place, and the rest of the court (from their designs) looked like it had been stagnating for a few hundred years. But there was a whole group of Fair Folk who went clubbing in the world of humans before they got blown up, so obviously there was more than a little traffic. Curiouser and curiouser. I will laugh, hard, if Lucky and whatshername the lady in white undergo a costume change.
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Lucky's new outfit especially...
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well this looks EPIC already the view around them is breathtaking 
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(: Awww, thank you!
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