The Dragon Queen's Thirst: Behind the Scenes

Hello, my lovely tier 3+ patrons! It's time for another peak behind the beaded curtain.

The Dragon Queen's Throat (or DQT for brevity) actually had a super quick turnaround time. My collaborator Estel and I developed the idea in mid-January, by the 25th I had a script written, and by January 29th I had already drawn a few pages. It felt really good to turn something around in just a few weeks. The final page was drawn on the 18th of February, so I had a nice buffer for when I took a week-long break, which I desperately needed. 

This comic spun out of the Masculinity Devourer post. I originally wasn't even going to post that goofy little drawing. I thought it would have been too silly for my audience, but it ended up being a hit on socials and with my collaborator, who loves fantasy stories. Not to tip my hand too much, but expect some more fantasy goodness this year with this little setting I'm putting together.

Sketches:

My early sketches were pretty close to what the end product came to:

I kind of love the tuft of hair on the end of Silverthroat's tail. I wish I had kept that.

The minotaur was the last piece of the puzzle. We needed some way to naturally progress from sucking off the alchemist to confronting the red dragon. I wanted to show Silverthroat has a soft spot for monster folk and I have an affinity for minotaurs, so it just clicked. I like Orion. Note to self: Bring back Orion for something.

The final form of Silverthroat was very much inspired by @JamDrawers 's kissy-lipped dragons. I wanted something feminine and bestial, powerful and refined. The wings resting like a cape came from the beloved 90s cartoon Gargoyles. It's a good look and it makes things easier to draw so of course I took it! One thing I would change if I could go back is that I would not commit to digitigrade legs. I don't really like how they look and I don't like drawing them, but it felt right for the mood. I wanted to show a point of no return for the character. She is a dragoness now, not a mere transformed human.

I realized early on that this was going to be a storybook style comic like Pretty John Bishop. I admit I didn't really have a plan for colors at the beginning. I was inspired by Shel Silverstein's black and white line drawings and wanted to emulate those. As you may recall, I had a breakthrough with color early on, so I went back and redid some pages. I've never done that before, and hopefully I won't have to do it again.  All due respect to Uncle Shelby, but I think I'll stick with color from now on.

I got to explore with some interesting compositions in DQT. I think around page 12 is when it really starts popping off. I know it's considered a bad habit, but I draw from page 1 until the end. There's something about jumping around in pages which makes it very hard for me to focus on getting the work done. I had to jump around with TiTina due to the collaborative nature of the piece, and it made for a very visually diverse and interesting comic. However, I feel there's a flow to pages drawn sequentially. It's easier to lead the eye when you're going gradually from one page to the next. I think that DQT would have been worse if I had focused on the 'budget pages' first. Budget pages are the pages where you really want to flex your muscles as an artist. They're the two-page spreads and dynamic panels in comics that artists love to draw. I tend to spread my 'budget' out into the work so it's a very even reading experience with a natural progression of art quality. I dislike comics that are all herky-jerky with their quality between pages, but that's just me. Sorry, that became a bit of a rant.

Cover:

The cover design was a fun one to bang out. I wanted to capture the contemporary fantasy cover aesthetic, but keep it in conversation with the rest of the art in the comic. Unlike THUNDERTHIGH, I wasn't trying to ape a particular look or style for DQT. More just a vibe, and I think I captured it.

Conclusion:

Well that's about all I can say about DQT. It was a fun comic to work on and it turned around a lot faster than I thought it would. If plans go as they seem to be going right now, I think you'll be seeing Silverthroat again in the near future. 

Thank you so much for your support and for reading The Dragon Queen's Thirst!