Hey guys, I will be taking some time off from the main Transyltown story to finish up the comic book I was contracted to do art for, Help Wanted. In the mean time I will continue updates, but I want to know what kind of stuff would you like to see. So take a look at the poll on the side, and let me know! Next week is another Compendium update, but after that I will take your votes to heart about what to give your during or intermission. Thanks!

Model

Since the beginning I wanted to challenge larger and more complex themes in Transyltown, but was worried about if the tone of the series was not right for that kind of thing. There were two things I read that changed my mind. I flipped through a friend’s copy of a Calvin and Hobbes book, and happened upon a series of strips about Calvin coming to terms with the concept of death. The next was me finally getting around to the classic comic series, Sandman, and reading the first story that included the character Death. These stories were both as sweet as they were sad, and I found myself wanted to write something that had those kinds of feelings.

Another idea I had wanted to incorporate into Transyltown were characters of myth that weren’t necessarily horror related such as deities, but there are so many and deities from different cultures often share similarities to others. I decided that deities in Transyltown would be representative of concepts and ideas rather than a specific deity, and writing Death allowed me to flesh out how I wanted those kinds of characters to work in Transyltown. Death never actually refers to herself by a name or is called by one in the story she debuts in. This is because I felt that, as concepts, deities have as many names as they do forms. I felt it was a way to reference how the concept of deities works in the real world. As other are introduced they may have names they prefer or names that others in the series call them.

Design

The main source of inspiration for her design is the face painting and styles associated with Day of the Dead. Since Death was making her first appearance in a comic I was making for 24 Hour Comics Day I simplified the makeup design. Because I knew “Grim Reaper” was the feeling I wanted for Ms. Bathory’s vision of Death I went with a cute cloak and hood design for her Timmy vision to have a similarity between the two designs. From there threw in some ghost and skeletal elements to add errieness to her Bathory vision. I had learned a lot from my struggles with designing Mammon’s demon form, so I felt that keeping it spooky but charming enough for Transyltown came across much more easily this time around.