Episode 11: A Chain of Worlds
These are the show notes for No Dragons Press: Episode 11. Enjoy!
(You can find the beginning of chapter 11 right around the 6:40 mark.)
Interview with Illustrator Emily Ruf
*beer cracks*
[voices: Woooo!]
This is a really exciting episode because I have No Dragons Press illustrator Emily Ruf on the show! I’m going to ask her to talk about her side of the Weekly Illustrated Fiction series, which we have running over at ascraeuspress.com/nodragons. Then I’m going to ask her to talk about what it’s like to collaborate with someone on a new chapter every week! That’s my favorite part of this process.
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Maggie and Emily: Twin Terrors. Microphone not pictured.
Maggie: Let’s start with you talking a little bit about your background and what you’ve been doing aside from [No Dragon Press].
Emily: Yeah! So, drawing is my background. I’ve been drawing as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, I used to draw cat faces all the time, that was my favorite thing to draw—
M: Surprising no one.
E: Yeah, surprising no one. So, yeah, I’ve been trying to take every art class in school, always doing drawings on the side. I’d say in the last three or four years or so I’ve gotten more serious about it, I’ve been doing bigger pieces, pushing myself to try different styles and things.
I really feel like in the last few years I’ve been coming into my own skin with drawing. It’s been flourishing ever since, and with working with you, too—I feel like I finally found a vision that I can represent fairly well and feel good about.
It’s all about taking these images in my head and trying to get them down on paper how I see them in my head, and with practice I feel like I’ve gotten better at that, at least to the point where I’m satisfied at the end. Most of the time.
M: Awesome. So talk a little bit about how you start creating something when you’re not really sure how it will end up. I get the sense that there’s a lot of growth while you’re actually working.
E: Yeah! It all starts with a visual in my head. From there, I like to use reference images. It gives me a really good base point to go off of. So once I have an image in my head, I try to find something online that looks similar.
If it’s a face, I try to find a similar face or expression, or if I can’t find anything I’ll usually mock something up in Photoshop using snippets of different images, maybe other drawings–just something that I can see it stat to come into fruition.
From there, I like to start with a loose sketch with pencil, a lot of loose lines, and eventually those lines start to form something that makes sense. They get a little darker, I erase the ones that don’t need to be there, and…yeah, that’s how it all begins.
M: That’s been really fun, because you’ll text me works in progress, and then I get to watch you add layers to that.
E: Yeah, it’s fun to have you on the other end because I get to send you these sketches in the beginning that look like almost nothing, and you’re probably terrified. But then as I switch to ink, and I start to make these lines permanent, then the actual drawing starts to come through.
Then, depending on how many layers of ink and different colors of markers I might be using, it really starts to change. It gets a lot darker, I use a lot of black backgrounds and dark colors. That’s a highlight of mine, to send you the progress pics and see your reactions.
M: Oh, it’s so much fun. It’s so much fun to see you reach into my brain and come up with something that looks like something.
E: I hope so.
M: So then you’ve taken some of those pictures and edited them together to make a little video so everyone can actually see your progress—are those on Ascraeus Press’s Instagram account, or over on your account?
E: Right now, they’re on my Instagram account, which is @ruftimes, but it might be good to move them over to Ascraeus Press.
M: Yeah. It’s been a fun collection to build.
E: It’s fun to see it morph. Taking 10-12 pictures during the process—it’s like watching a flower grow in time-lapse. It’s kind of cool.
M: I like it!
E: Yeah, so I was driving today and I saw a bumper sticker on the back of a car that said “REPUBLICANS FOR VOLDEMORT.” And, uh…
M: So you’ve got your write-in all set.
E: I mean his hair is better.
*laughing*
M: Isn’t Voldemort the one with a face on the other side of his face?
E: Uh, yeah, that’s…I think so…
M: I’m revealing my lack of Harry Potter lore…
E: …sort of? And then he turns into the squished nose man.
M: Yeah! He’s sort of like a mummy.
E: He’s terrifying.
M: Don’t hate me because I don’t know Harry Potter.
E: Yeah, so I just watched it for the first time in my life.
M: Had you ever read them?
E: I mean I’m almost thirty, that’s kind of sad—no, I haven’t read them.
M: What did you think? Did you watch it on VHS?
E: Uh, fantastic. Not gonna read them, though. And no, I don’t have one of those. I left my VHS player in 1986.
E: Beer Break!
M: Cheers.
*clink*
* * *
All this talking makes me thirsty.
* * *
So, we actually did come back after the beer break, but I thought I’d save the rest of the interview for next week’s episode. So make sure to check back next week for the rest of my conversation with No Dragons Press illustrator and all-around bad-ass person Emily Ruf.
There’s actually a whole lot more hilarity in this interview, which eventually just turned into us lambasting Waterworld, but I’ll save you the trouble of fast-forwarding through that here. (There may be a separate podcast in the works…)
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed hearing a little bit more about the process behind the No Dragons Press artwork. Emily’s a fantastic artist and a really good friend, and I’m sure we’ll be hearing more from her in the future.
And now, here is No Dragons Press: Episode 11: A Chain of Worlds.
Thanks so much for listening, everyone. Check back next week for the rest of my interview with Emily Ruf, and make sure to check out nodragonspress.com/podcast for show notes, links, and all sorts of good stuff. Till then, take care, be kind, and have a great week!