Writing

I dreaded writing AND drawing this chapter ever since I decided to include it in my Alexander Romance retelling. (see Chapter Four's Author Notes for the reasons why).

Man, sometimes I really envy writers who only need to convey a story through prose - they can just handwave all the logistics of the action i.e there's a difference between writing the sentence "Alexander dropkicks Nicolaos" versus drawing how exactly Alexander is dropkicking. I touched on the difference when I was researching how to draw someone drinking from a kylix.

You can read how the race was written in the original. It's actually not a very long sequence, though packed full of names and brief descriptions of who tripped over first etc. However it's not exactly workable as is. So I had to make up some of what's happening and solve the logistics of adapting this race to visuals.

The biggest change is Hephaestion's involvement as Alexander's assistant. In the Romance, there was no mention of the assistant, or if Alexander had one, it was some Olympian charioteer called Laomedon. Hephaestion himself is only mentioned by name once in the Olympic Race section of the original Alexander Romance (we're told Alexander brought him along on a best-buds trip to Pisa, pretty much the same way as retold in Chapter Four), and never again. So his presence here is a "plot correction", as expressed by Alexander. Why did Hephaestion suddenly vanish? Where did he go? Well, this time, he's not going anywhere.

Inserting Hephaestion back into the narrative actually helped with the logistics. The other change in the retelling, not too obvious, is the sequence of events that led up to Nicolaos' defeat. I added the bit about Hephaestion cracking the whip at a competitor's chariot wheel, which then inspires Alexander to do the same towards Nicolaos. In the original it was either simply "Alexander killed Nicolaos" or "Alexander caught Nicolaos' wheel and turned him over", which... is not helpful.

In the Syriac Alexander Romance, the colours of the charioteers were specified. Normally I would follow these details if given them, but the image of Alexander/Hephaestion in blue persisted since the early days of Hephaestion's character design in 2019. The decision to keep them and Nicolaos in blue and purple was mainly to help them stand out more in the overwhelming orange and yellow palette, especially in the chaos of the action.

Other than that, the race is depicted almost faithfully to the original. A lot of chaos. This chapter contains the most violent action sequence I had ever drawn in my career... so far.

All of this adding, correcting and editing from my end is itself the metanarrative theme of Chapter Five. I made it as if it was my Alexander who requested the changes, for narrative reasons that will become clearer later on; but emotionally let's just say in 323 BCE the grief is still fresh.

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The conversation between Alexander and the Servant is for sure very flattering. Alexander better soak it up, 'cause I am not going to be nice to him anymore. :)

Thumbnailing and Sketching

Tools

Thumbnails: Moleskine notebook, mechanical pencil

Sketches: Procreate, iPad with Apple pencil

Time taken

Thumbnails: 1 to 2 hours.

Sketches: Longer than usual because of how incredibly tough planning the layouts and logistics were. The portion before and after the actual race took a few days, and the portion with the race took a little more than a week.

Inking and Colouring

Tools

Inks: Procreate, iPad with Apple pencil, Photoshop

Colours and Letters: Photoshop

Time taken

Inks and Colours: about a month? This is counting the breaks when I had two brief bouts of illness from a flu and post-vaccination, AND some real life busyness.

Research

The bulk of the research is entirely visual: the chariots, horses, Olympic garb, etc. There's not much I can say here that isn't already in the footnotes lol

At some point I might have to make an artbook to show my sketches, studies and whatnot. We will see.