You say you want a revolution...

Time frame: Still pert near the beginning

Amount of book complete: Not much

Once I had a better idea of India’s character model, I went back to the “photographs”.  The next in the set was a French Revolution themed illustration where India’s doll would once again find herself in an unfortunate scenario.  But it was mostly her fault.  She never should have made that comment about cake.

It wasn’t just India’s character model that changed.  Her personality changed a bit as well.  Initially, India was going to be pretty dark (almost like Wednesday Adams).  But I didn’t want the “dark” thing to be the dominant feature of India’s personality, so I pared it back a bit.

This drawing never actually made it into the book.  Admittedly, playing French Revolution gallows is pretty dark, but it was left out because I ran out of space, not because I felt it was pushing the “acceptable” limit.

As with the Howard Carter/Mummy photo, I drew this one the first time around with India’s original character model and then re-did it when she was redesigned.  Here's a very rough layout sketch of the first version, followed by the final:

 And here's a rough sketch of the second version followed by the final final version:

All sorts of things changed between the first and second versions (aside from India, of course).  The design of India's doll changed as well.  The original looked a bit like a Raggedy Ann doll.  I decided I wanted the doll to look more vacant so that her expression would always contrast with the scene.  India's doll would always look like she was going to the mall regardless of what was happening around her.

With this drawing, I was starting to feel more confident about the characters and the tone of the story, but also about the whole project itself.  Before I'd begun these, the story was just an idea.  These first drawings started to make it feel like it was actually going to happen, which encouraged me to keep going.

Cheers.