To anyone interested in seeing where IDotM (Jester & Essek comic) is going, worry not! I’m working on it again after taking some time off to let my wrist chill for a bit
Thank you for your nice words and for your patience!
It seems y’all really like that animaniacs post, so if you happened to follow me specifically for that and are hoping for more, I just wanna say that I’m probably not going to be making anymore animaniacs art .o.
No hard feelings if you’d like to unfollow me because of that, I don’t keep track of that kind of stuff!
Big disclaimer: In art, the phases of the moon are generally used to convey mood, or for purely aesthetic purposes, rather than as a timekeeping implement. Also, when considering the accuracy of phases of the moon in stories far offset from the modern day, it may be unwise to place specific dates based on the moon, but in Novae, events matched up well enough that I figured I may as well use the moon to help mark time.
Another disclaimer: Specific dates are (generally) arbitrarily chosen by nitpicking the wording characters use so take those with a grain of salt xD The time between the chapters and the general time of year are the parts that I’ve tried to nail down here.
(Last edited: 07/29/2020)
Explanations to follow >:3
DECEMBER 1672:
Raz is 22 at the start of Novae (character bio), which starts in 1672 (pg 4).
Novae must start on or after Raziol’s 22nd birthday, specifically December 6, 1672.
During Ch 2, Raziol and Sulvain enjoy a dark, moonless night of stargazing. This puts the phase of the moon sometime between 1st quarter and 3rd quarter, anywhere between the 11th and the 27th of December, 1672. (idk Paris is pretty far north so the moon doesn’t get very high in the sky anyway)
(also for Saturn to be up and Orion mostly upright in December of 1672, that puts the time for night between 10pm and 12am, but that’s nitpicky at best xD)
Raz says he hadn’t changed since last Wednesday (pg 12), so to allow ample time for that and for the phase of the moon to kinda match in Ch 2, we can push the start of Ch1 to the fourth week of December.
Ch 1 starts at dawn (pgs 1-18) and ends in the late evening/early night of that same day (pgs 19-31).
Ch 2 starts (pgs 32- 39) in the night of that same day (“The meeting is tonight” from pg 17) goes to midday (idk, the lighting looks midday-ish xD) of the next day (pgs 40-42) to evening (pgs 43-47), and through the night of this second day (pgs 48-66).
Chapters 3 and 4 (pgs 67-142) continue the night of the second day.
So by the end of Chapter 4, Raziol and Sulvain have known each other for less than 48 hours.
Ch 5 pt 1 (pgs 143-164) and Ch 5 pt 2 (pgs 165-1st panel of pg 172) take place a few days after the end of Ch 4 (pg 145) and I’m assuming all in the same day because Raz doesn’t change out of his ink stained shirt. Sulvain asks to borrow Raz for the afternoon (pg 169), and the shadows are pretty long when he leaves the morgue(?) (pg 164) so I’m assuming pt 1 takes place in the morning? Also Jean noticed he was being stalked earlier that morning (pg 148- maybe closer to dawn?). Putting this part close to Christmas but not on Christmas day would explain why the Academy empties out, but why a tailor shop is open in pt 2. (I’m rather hand wavey on this bit but oh well xD)
JANUARY 1673:
Idk maybe they just go on lots of dates and panels 2 and 3 of pg 172 are just one example.
I have a few reasons why I think the last panel on page 172 takes place in February but I’ll get to that.
FEBRUARY 1673:
Raz wears his new overcoat and Sulvain is in an entirely different outfit (last panel of pg 172), so it’s reasonable to assume that a fair amount of time has passed since the tailor took Raziol’s measurements. They spend the day together and we head into the evening (pgs 173 and 174) before Jeans’s death. This is assuming “I’ll see you tomorrow night” (pg 174) refers to the very next night we see Raziol and Sulvain together (pg 175).
“These past couple of weeks” (pg 176) implies they haven’t spent months together yet, so we can’t be much later than February if they met back up at the end of December. The morning that Jean is killed, we can see a waning crescent moon, meaning we’re just a little bit before a new moon. This places Jean’s death in the third week of February 1673.
We see that there is some snowmelt (pgs 172 & 173), but with trees still bare and nights still frigid (Ch 8 & 9), and we also see snowdrops and crocuses blooming together (pg 331), which all together seems to indicate we’re somewhere in early spring, which reinforces my thought that we’re in February. To be fair, from the sources I’ve glanced through, both snowdrops and crocuses can bloom in January, which could bump all of this forward a month, so take that as you will xD
Raziol and Sulvain leave the observatory before dawn after stargazing all night (pg 175 and on) and by the end of Ch 6, the sun has risen (pg 209).
Ch 5 pt 2 (pgs 175-192) takes place in early pre-dawn hours around mid February 1673.
Ch 6 (pgs 209-219) takes place just after dawn on the same day as pgs 175-192.
The page comments on pg 220 place the start of Ch 7 a few days after the end of Ch 6, likely in the early hours of the morning assuming Raz saw meteors while staying up for Jean’s funeral (pg 266). Over the course of the chapter, the color scheme moves from rosy orange (pgs 224~233) to pale yellow (pgs 235~287, Ève comes in at the start of this) to golden (pg 260~269) as we go from dawn hours to morning.
Ch 7 (pgs 220-269) takes place in the morning, a few days after the end of Ch 6.
Sulvain asks “Tonight?” (pg 264) which indicates that Ch 8 happens the same day as Ch 7
Ch 8 takes place at sundown the same day as Ch 7 (pgs 270-277) until dawn the next morning (pgs 278-313)
Ch 9 takes place on the same day as the end of Ch 8, picking up right around dawn and currently we’re about ~24 hours after the fight with Ève (pgs 314-351)
Ch 10 (thus far) continues the same day of Ch 9 (pgs352-?)
No moon is seen rising or setting, so Ch 7, 8, 9, and 10 might take place on February’s new moon, give or take a day, which fits the waning crescent we see in pg 176.
The concept for this little comic got planted in my brain last September, and I have a lot of thoughts about it that I want to write out, so here they are!
[you are here] | [pgs 2 & 3] | [more to come!]
Thoughts are below the cut vvv
My explanations for the title (Apart and Akin) and the caption (the mortifying ordeal of being known) will be in the write up for the last page.
So this page was actually the last one I drew out of all of them. By this point, I was much more comfortable doing backgrounds and especially using SAI 2′s perspective rulers to make geometric backgrounds- I found a very easy way to make brick walls too xD
Panel 1: If this comic were in color, this page would take place just before sunset, with bright gold light contrasting a dark blue window, just how gold and blue contrast in Raziol’s current overcoat. The window’s rather high up on the page and we can’t look through it and see much of anything with ease, aside from bookshelves. The title is also pretty high up. Both of these feel ‘off’ to me, but that’s the point- something’s not quite right, and I felt some slightly unsatisfying composition choices may help convey that.
P2: Then we see Raz at his desk, up top in his room. His hair is down and he’s not dressed up in any manner, he’s all alone at the end of the day after all. You could even say it’s a vulnerable state of dress. He’s rather impassively reading a book by candlelight, fiddling with his hair, and he’s also got something else in front of him. I tried to keep his expression here neutral, but not a content neutral. The background of this panel isn’t especially detailed, but there’s still a slight bit of clutter visible- something’s going on behind the scenes.
P3: Now we can see that Raz is reading the notebook Sulvain gifted him, accompanied by the Buddha statue he was also gifted. Here I’m assuming that Sulvain hasn’t been switching out notebooks throughout the past 9 chapters, and everything we’ve seen Sulvain say thus far with the notebook is contained within a single book. Raz gets to the “I would like you to have this, as a token of our friendship” line, which is what Sulvain said as he gave Raz the statuette. Behind the English text, it says “Je voudrais que tu aies ça, pour démontrer notre amitié,” and is written in Sulvain’s handwriting (it’s very fun but also ow my wrist, I always forget I can rotate my canvas xD). I tried to get that on the notebook page itself but it didn’t work out xD Aside from Raz’s new outfit, these are the biggest mementos Sulvain has given to Raz so far.
P4: I’d like to think Raz has a complicated expression here, looking away from the notebook and at the statuette. He’s not idly playing with his hair anymore and his attention is now more focused, but he’s still not happy here. Given the weight of these gifts, why is he so blank to begin with? I think I’ll talk about that a bit later ;D
P5: And here we see Mael. We’re intentionally behind him, we can’t see his face yet. If this panel were in color, it would be more apparent here that he’s not wearing his overcoat. He’s waiting outside of Raziol’s door, one hand gripping the other arm in hesitation. This is far from the sort of impulsive entrances we’ve seen him make thus far, so this pause is uncharacteristic. He’s deliberating, thinking something, perhaps trying to plan his next move.
This whole comic thing has changed quite a bit since I first thought of it or even began drawing it out. For example, Raz did not have Sulvain’s notebook at the start, which is one of the reasons this page was drawn last.
The concept for this little comic got planted in my brain last September, and I have a lot of thoughts about it that I want to write out, so here they are!
[pg1] | [you are here] | [more to come!]
Thoughts are below the cut vvv
PAGE 2
This is the actual first page I drew. These sketches are a whole lot looser than they are later on, a testament to my confidence growing over the course of this. I started this trying to only focus on the expressions I was drawing, but clearly it got more involved than just that xD
Panel 1: Raz follows through from the previous page, and is now holding the statuette, looking over its details while deep in thought. Whatever he’s thinking, he’s not too happy about it. A knock at the door and a voice through it intrude on Raz, and without waiting for an answer, Mael goes ahead and enters Raz’s space, even if only slightly. Mael tries to be restrained, but still ends up unconsciously barging in anyway.
P2: And Raz isn’t happy about that in the slightest, though he is mildly curious about this change of demeanor in Mael.
P3: Despite his curiosity, Raz still doesn’t want to deal with this, especially not right now. He has other things to think about.
P4: Now we can see Mael’s face, and he is tired. His necktie is undone, his hair is a bit out of order. He’s also dressed very vulnerably, completely lacking his overcoat. Perhaps he didn’t care to dress up in the first place. We know Raziol has a room here, but Mael’s from an affluent family, so he may live elsewhere. If that’s the case, perhaps he stayed too long at the library, or maybe he just lives elsewhere in the Academy. He’s still being quiet and hesitant, and very vague. When I first wrote the script thingy for this comic, I described Mael’s face here as a ‘freshly cleaned mess’ as if he’d just finished crying or something. That probably would have been more clear with color or a more detailed sketch xD
PAGE 3
Not too adventurous with the panel layouts or shot choices yet, but I really tried to focus on conveying a wide range of emotion in Mael.
Panel 1: A call back to the beginning of Ch 7 when Mael barges into Raz’s room on the night of Jean’s funeral, but also referring to the ‘freshly cleaned mess’ bit. At this point in their relationship, Raziol has settled into a method of how to deal with Mael, despite how antagonistic Mael continues to be. Resigned but straightforward, and also with a bit of snark, though that last point gets pushed a bit more given Raz’s current (annoyed) mood.
P2: Raz’s accusation against Mael’s current sobriety makes him bristle. His attempt to communicate has been misunderstood, and that hurts and so he leans more into Raz’s space.
P3: And yet he stops himself, despite knowing he could say more to counter Raz, but no, he shouldn’t. That would only prove Raz right (that Mael is only there to be a nuisance) and that’s the last thing he wants to do right now. I hope I conveyed that conflict in his face well enough xD
P4: So he pauses, purposefully, emphatically, attempting to collect himself before continuing.
P5: Mael tries to restart, deciding to adjust the way he’s approaching Raz and putting even more thought into his words.
P6: Mael’s anger has drained and it can’t hold him up any more, so he leans against the door frame. Even a quick flame of anger is rather exhausting, but it can expose the emotions lying underneath once it dies out. What is he here for then, if not to deliberately antagonize Raziol?
P7: Now this is interesting. An apology? From Mael of all people? That’s some very unexpected behavior. Raz’s curiosity is piqued, even though Mael is the last person he wants to be around at the moment.
I think it was at this point that I realized this comic was gonna be way longer than the 4-ish pages I originally planned.
{Of recent movies I’ve watched, I really like Kimi no Na wa, Moana, and Mad Max: Fury Road}
{For my favorite movie, I always default back to My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend xD}
🎈- Share a childhood memory!
{Iiiiiii specifically remember sitting outside one August evening, some time in elementary school I think? and I was reading Twilight (of the Warriors kind- not vampires) and it was nice and warm and there was a little breeze and ye :3}
