#frevlbr

Part 2 Part 4 Index

OH GOD THIS IS A MESS.

Also the double page I basically did a color test. And the first time I experimented with a double level of baloons. The baloons with pink letters are supposed to be background, while the main dialogue is in black.

Do you know Egyptian art? Remember how characters' scale reflects their rank rather than realism? This page illustrates each character role by dimension: Barras is huge, Thérèse and Josephine (who is still called Rose for now, even if I'll always refer to her as Josephine by habit) are full figures to showcase their beauty, everyone else is a decoration, and Napoleon is tiny, at the bottom of the page.

The glass pyramid in the center is filled with merveilleuses which are inspired by Dita Von Teese in her Glamonatrix show. It's all supposed to be a portrait of Thermidorian society: fragile like crystal, expensive like champagne, focused on hedonism as a coping mechanism. It's not even stable, and despite Napoleon's leaning into that, his figure actually balances the triangle, just like a figure like his is lowkey fundamental to Barras, no matter how much he tries to ignore him.

I WAS FORGETTING ABOUT THE DRESSES. Well, actually I've already talked about them in this post. Briefly, the theme of this party was supposed to be summer flowers, so Thérèse is a hybiscus, Rose is - here it comes! - like a rose (I know it's a spring flower, but they keep flower-ing un summer too), while Barras is dressed as a butterfly, sucking juicy nectar from all of them like the greedy man he is.

Josephine's dress is a reference to a supposedly real dress she owned, entirely made of rose-petals. I've been searching for the original source of this fact for years, although it sounds like something Laure d'Abrantès would say. I designed this including other rose elements as well, such as thorns, to anticipate Josephine's relationship with passion.