R.B. Ashton
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Giantess Comic Art and the Inspiration for My Next Animation
🕑 Added 2025-05-28 09:30:47 +0000 UTCSomething a little different this week, to introduce my next animation I thought I'd go into a bit of a deeper dive into my thinking about comic book art! Shared here for subscribers before I post this publicly along with a couple of my favourite comic covers!
Comics that play with size have always been one of my favourite things, for a reason which makes or breaks most size media I enjoy: they provide a sense of genuine interaction. Most forms of art play with scale by either stitching two things together (e.g. collages, green-screen video) or avoiding interaction entirely (e.g. scenarios that don’t include any contact). When I go looking for evidence of giants, I want to see them preying on small people, and small people reacting to that – the fear and delight being the entire point – so I find the shoddiest material with even a tiny bit of interaction can be that much more engaging than the most polished work with none.
There are multiple reasons that comic book art scratches the itch so well It’s conceptualised as a whole, with giants and tinies depicted together in the same plane, not pieced together later. Connected to this, we often see more detail in comic art than elsewhere, with little touches such as indents from touch. It’s also devised to quickly and clearly demonstrate character, meaning we get emotion. That is, wicked captors and panicked victims expressively reacting to each other. With all this, a few panels of images and lines of dialogue can create a whole progressing scene and it triggers the imagination in a way that feels genuine. I also really appreciate how creative the artists are: so many covers use size as a shorthand for demonstrating dominance and peril because it’s where they get the freest rein to just go wild, exploring fun and unusual ideas even where such depictions have no relation to the story inside.
Cover art in particular is a robust domain for giant women and little people in danger, including showing characters prepared to devour their enemies, which we might never actually get in the stories, hard to weave in as that is. Most prominent, perhaps, are scenes of giant women grabbing or holding their small victims, and through the years I’ve found these to be some of the best and most evocative examples of giantess media.
The cover to Doctor Aphra #16 is one of the best examples of this to date; there’s no actual size-play in the issue, it’s just used to show the threat of the character (Domina Tagge), but it’s a fantastically vivid and characterful single shot. There’s a great sense of action and interaction here, as we have not just one but three people trapped in the grip of a giantess. You can see how they’re each struggling in their own way, and we have these delightful touches with the way Domina’s fingers wrap around them and how the victims push back. It’s a simple image, not a great deal of detail up close, but we get an immediate feel for an entire scene, and more – they’re fighting to get free, but this giantess has them trapped and could do anything with them…
So, in respect and homage of this and all the wonderful comic artists out there, my next larger animation project is loosely based on the Doctor Aphra cover, in an attempt to visualise a little more of that wonderfully depicted scene. I’ve got some characters I think came out pretty close to the image (though not being familiar with the actual comic I admit it’s not that accurate!) and am developing a couple of minutes of footage with these three getting snatched up and held against their will. I don’t think I’ll go so far as to have them eaten this time, as I’d usually do, because part of the charm here is in the sense of imagining what Domina might do with her victims next… though we might get a hint of it.
Here’s a quick still to show where I’ve got to with portraying it. I’ll put up some animation previews for subscribers soon, and should have the full animation complete later this month (as usual, available to subscribers first, before a public release a few weeks later). In the meantime, feel free to share some of your favourite giant and shrinking comic art with me, I can’t get enough!
Edit - Okay something funky went on with the scheduling and images so now I've actually added the images! And quick FYI, the full Under & Over animation release will be next week!
Comments
Señor Sanchez
Chime in everyone, speak now or forever hold your peace. What influenced you or inspired you? Silence is not golden, if creators don't know feedback, how can they improve or cater to what's going on for the community.
R.B. Ashton
Okay something funky went on with the scheduling and images so now I've actually added the images! And quick FYI, the full Under & Over animation release will be next week!
