Artist’s note:

Gilda continued putting on the glove. She adjusted it a bit more then looked up again. “What? Can’t speak? Look I don’t time for this; I’m out of here!”

The griffon walked to the end of the alley; before she took off she muttered. “Later loser.” Then she was gone.

I did this piece as a bit of brainstorming because I have had no success with the composition of a very complicated MLP piece. The picture has several large, important elements in it that have been fighting with me since I started on this project. I just couldn’t get them to integrate together, and yesterday was starting to feel like a repeat of past attempts to solve this logjam. No progress.

So instead of tearing my hair out I figured I’d do some practice sketching. There are griffons in the picture and recently a watcher, antwanstar, commented that Gilda in gloves would be “sick as hell” so this image popped into my head. about 35 minutes later I had the basic sketch done, but I still had no new insight to my real problem so I did a bit more shading of Gilda.

As my mind wandered I imagined the little conversation above and her flying to a movie theater to meet with some other griffons. They buy some tickets and then enter the theater. There is a movie already showing and as they sat down I realized that the movie was showing the scene I was trying to create and was having so much trouble with.

As I watched the battle unfold in my mind I realized I had been approaching the picture the wrong angle. Instead creating a book illustration I needed to think in terms of storyboard art for film. Wide screen, cinematic designs was the direction I needed to go! So after lunch I hammered out three radically different viewpoints and designs for the client. This morning they gave the green light to one of them.

I hope you like what you see. Please help make more art like this possible by supporting me at Patreon.