Using Reference to Shape My Medusa Layouts
Moving from Reference to Layouts
The images accompanying this post are from the rough layout of my Medusa comic. It’s basically just taking some reference photos of a couple I found sitting on a park bench and using that to work out the pose of the two main characters sitting on a bed in a bedroom next to each other.
Then I took the reference that I drew of their costumes so I could start actually making the mannequins that are sitting on the bed look like those characters. This is just part of me using a little bit of photo reference alongside my own loose character designs—not quite full model sheets, but loose designs—to inform the rough layouts.
Going forward, as I’ve said, I’m going to try and really cut down on how much detail I put into my thumbnails. This stage will probably be sort of where my rough pencils begin, and the thumbnails themselves will be something a lot looser. Beyond that, I don’t have any new updates on my reading of Jack Kirby’s New Gods, as I am still slowly making my way through it.
Chasing a Better Narrative History
Lately, I haven’t been really into a lot of the podcasts I usually listen to. I’ve just been needing to find something narrative to listen to, so I went back to audiobooks. I had started listening to a 20-hour audiobook on the Crusades, and I want to say that I was probably about three to four hours in when, for some reason, I just wasn’t really feeling that either. It was well-written, and the battles and sequences were interesting, but I wasn’t necessarily getting sucked in.
I think I’ve been spoiled by the podcast Hardcore History, because Dan Carlin is an amazing narrator. Even though he’s not narrating an audiobook in that podcast, the way that he describes and speaks about history is so engaging. He’s such a natural storyteller that anything history-related gets held against that bar, and it’s a very hard bar for a history book to compete with.
That said, I dipped back into my Audible account because I have a whole bunch of books that I purchased years ago that I still haven’t gotten through, even though I’ve switched over to mostly reading from the library. There was a book in there that caught my eye. If you’ve seen the series on Netflix—which I have not watched yet—there’s a series about an African man named Yasuke who, in actual history, ended up becoming a samurai. There is a historical book called African Samurai which tells his story.
The Cinematic Feel of African Samurai
In listening to that book, it gave me exactly what I needed because it is written similarly to The Agony and the Ecstasy, the historical novelization of the life of Michelangelo. It reads like a novel in that it tells you what the authors speculate Yasuke was thinking at certain moments, talking about his history, what he’s doing, and what they thought he was feeling. It feels like you’re listening to a narrative audiobook, with the exception that there’s no dialogue.
They describe what people talk about and summarize the conversations, detailing how different characters felt or reacted to things they heard. There’s definitely some speculation in it, but it’s written very well. It feels like you’re watching a story unfold with the volume off, where instead of subtitles, you get a summary of the context of what’s happening. It’s written very cinematically, and I’m really enjoying it.
I actually wish that there were more books by this writing team. There’s another one out there that deals with the first Japanese people to travel to London, and I’m tempted to check that out, but let me get through one book at a time. It’s a historical book as opposed to fiction, and even though I was leaning more towards wanting fiction, this just caught my eye, I gave it a shot, and I’m really liking it.
Mission: Impossible and Empty Calories
As for movies, I did get around to watching Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning, the latest film in the Tom Cruise series. I enjoyed it, but I will say that some of these movies have more convoluted plots than others, and this one was very convoluted.
If it weren’t for the fact that the cast beyond just Tom Cruise was so good, it might have struggled. I really thought Pom Klementieff—the actress who played Mantis in Guardians of the Galaxy—was great. Her character here was really enjoyable, even better than she was in the previous movie. Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames are always excellent, too. At a certain point, they basically became the heart of the movie in terms of the emotional buddy-and-family dynamic that Tom Cruise is fighting to protect throughout the series. All the new people added to the cast were good, making it a very strong ensemble.
My only knock on the film was that while it was a fun roller coaster ride, it kind of felt like empty calories. Yes, it talked about the very real threat of AI being introduced into military systems and how that can go wrong, making it relevant to the existential horrors we face in our world today. But it still felt very much like a popcorn movie where characters just chase from one MacGuffin to another.
I enjoyed the film in spite of that light popcorn nature, but not every movie has to be a hard-hitting drama or something that deeply moves you. It had its emotional beats, but it wasn’t a life-changing film. It’s a solid adventure film. I’d give it 3 out of 5 stars. It’s good and worthwhile. If you enjoy action movies, you would enjoy it, but if you need the absolute best of the best to sit through an action film, then maybe skip this one.
Join the Discussion
When translating a real-life photo reference into a fantasy setting, what are the biggest challenges you face in keeping the pose natural?
Do you have a “Dan Carlin” in your life—a specific creator or narrator who has raised the bar so high for a genre that it’s tough to enjoy anyone else’s take on it?
How do you feel about historical books that use speculation to build a narrative? Do you prefer strict, dry facts, or do you enjoy when authors lean into a more cinematic, thought-provoking approach to history?