March is going to be a really fun month for me. 4 episodes of 4 different TV shows that I wrote will be airing in the next few weeks.

On March 12th, Transformers: Robots in Disguise episode 204 “Suspended” will be airing on Cartoon Network.

On March 20th, Ultimate Spider-Man Vs. The Sinister Six episode “Double Agent Venom” will be airing on Disney XD.

On March 27th, Avengers Assemble: Ultron Revolution episode “Saving Captain Rogers” will be airing on Disney XD.

Also on March 27th, Guardians of The Galaxy episode “We Are the World Tree” will be airing on Disney XD.

Tune in as I write your favorite superheroes, some robots who turn into cars, and a bunch of a-holes.

~Mairghread

 

ToilAndTrouble_006_A_MainDear Readers,

This is easily the saddest and happiest post I’ve written so far. Today is the release of the last issue of my first creator-owned series, Toil and Trouble, and I am so proud I could burst. Toil and Trouble has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, from the level of detail it required at every step to the infamous ‘curse’ that seemed to shadow us. Bringing Smertae, Riata, Cait and Macbeth to life was one of the singularly greatest accomplishments of my career and I couldn’t have done this without so many wonderful people. I’d like to thank them now.

To Kelly and Nichole Matthews, thank you for rendering Smertae and her ilk with such precision and care. I will always be in your debt.

To Kyla Vanderklugt, your covers are amazing. They inspire me every time I see them.

To Warren Montgomery, thank you for your fabulous lettering which absolutely went the extra mile.

To Jillian Crab, all the wonderful details of your design work helped this book jump off the shelves.

To Whitney Leopard and Sierra Hahn, thank you from the bottom of my heart for keeping us all on track, despite the odds.

To Rebecca Taylor, Toil and Trouble’s first champion. This truly wouldn’t have been possible without you.

To Sarah Stone and Eliza Frye, for all your help in bringing Toil and Trouble into focus.

To Bill, who wrote such a great jumping-off point. I hope we did you proud.

To my mother and proofreader, Barbara, I love you deeply.

To my father, who taught me to love Shakespeare as much as breathing.

To Jason, my husband, who kept me safe and sane even when I was wandering through the halls of the Overlook hotel, looking for inspiration.

To M and L, always.

And finally, thank you to the readers and retailers. The fact that you took a chance on our strange little tale amazes me, the fact that you liked it inspires me and the fact that you’re here now leaves me in awe. I cannot thank you enough.

All six issues of Toil and Trouble are now available at your local comic book store, digitally, or through the Boom Studios website. We will be collecting them all into a single book which will be out in the Fall of 2016. Stay tuned for updates on the collection and for news about my upcoming projects.

Blessed Be,
Mairghread ScottWitches

Recently, I have been getting a lot of great questions and feedback about how to write comic scripts. Questions about how much description to put into panels, how much acting to describe, how much action do I choreograph in the script, what do I leave up to the artist. Since issue 1 of Toil and Trouble has been out for a few months now, I thought I would post the full script for that issue so everyone can see just what I write in my scripts and compare it to the artists’ final interpretation. TnT page 1

Now you may notice some small changes, a page I describe as 5 panels might get cut to 4 or expanded to 6 panels. A line of narration or dialogue might have been cut if we thought  the art conveyed what we needed so the line became unnecessary. Rather than editing the script to match the final comic, I’ve presented the original script here as the artists received it so that you can see what they worked with to create the issue.

<One small note: I normally space my captions and dialogue over two tab spaces, I can’t remember why I didn’t do that here, but I do it on my other scripts and suggest you do too, because it will give you a better sense of how the dialogue will look in an actual bubble.>

Script page 1

One final note, there is a really cool writing exercise you can do here. Take issue 2 of Toil and Trouble or another comic you really love and using this script as a template see if you can reverse engineer the comic into the script. What do you need to write in the panel descriptions to get the artist to draw what you have seen in the final book? How would you describe those panels, scenes, and that action. This is a technique I first heard about from Matt Fraction years ago, and is a really helpful exercise.

Now without any further ado, I present the script, Toil_And_Trouble-Issue1-FINAL

I hope this spurs discussions and questions, feel free to reach out to me via Twitter or Tumblr with any followup questions.

Hi Everyone!

Just jumping online to let you know I’ll be attending Long Beach Comic Con this weekend and speaking on a few panels. Come on down for a great (and very air-conditioned) convention! If you want to see me too, here’s where I’ll be:

logo_lbcc_large

Saturday 9/12
ROOM 103B/C
10:30am – 11:30am
WOMEN IN ANIMATION Craig Miller heads the Professional Development Program for Women in
Animation and has been active in the organization for many years. Craig moderates this discussion with
four dynamic women; Mairghread Scott, Charlotte Fullerton, Shea Fontana, and Jules Rivera, who come
from different aspects of the industry to talk about their experiences and discuss the challenges and
breakthroughs they’ve had in Animation.

ROOM 103B/C
3:30pm – 4:30pm
YOUNG GUNS OF ANIMATION The next generation of comics and animation writers answer your questions on what it takes to build a career when you’re just starting out. People at the top may not know what it takes to succeed today. But we’ll tackle the tough issues, like how to transition to being a full-time writer, how to get your first credit, and how to convince potential employers to take you seriously. Other topics include: effective networking, pitching and selling, and working with editors / story-editors. If you’ve ever asked, “How do I break in?” or – even more important – “How do I keep getting work once I’ve got my foot in the door?”, this panel is definitely for you. Jonathan Callan (Ben 10: Omniverse, Slugterra), Jeremy Adams (Spooksville, Thunderbirds Are Go!), Lisa Kettle (Miles from Tomorrowland), Mairghread Scott (Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Transformers Prime) and Matt Wayne (Ben 10: Omniverse, Justice League: Unlimited, Hellboy: Sword of Storms).

Sunday 9/13
Room 101A
1:30pm – 2:30pm
LOST IN TRANSLATION: APPLYING YOUR OWN VOICE TO SOMEONE ELSE’S CHARACTERS Q: How
do you apply your own voice and imagination to someone else’s characters? A: Very carefully. For
more sage advice on playing in pop culture’s best sandboxes and how to NOT lose anything in translation,
join writers Mike Johnson (Star Trek; Supergirl), Mairghread Scott (Transformers), Jody Houser
(Orphan Black), and Joe Harris (X-Files) comics as they talk about comics and dispense free advice.

 

Hope to see you there!

Mairghread

Getting the right cover can be difficult. The cover is the first image that people will see of your book and your first, best chance to sell them on it. It will be the most-shared image and the image most equated with the title. For a limited series like Toil and Trouble, we wanted our covers to have a visual theme that connects each issue. We also wanted to use the covers to show off our cast, the relationships between them, and how they will change over the course of the series.

For the main Toil and Trouble covers, our editor Whitney Leopard hired artist Kyla Vanderklugt. Kyla had previously worked on Jim Henson’s The Storyteller: Witches with Whitney and her style seemed a perfect for our series. The cover process often starts with a few cover concepts. These are generally rougher sketches that show off the layout without as much detail, but as you’ll see below, Kyla went all out on her concepts to really give us a sense of what they would look like. Here is what Kyla had to say about her concept pitches:

“One’s inspired by illuminated manuscripts (I was looking at the Book of Deer) – the sidebars showing bits of scenery from the issue, here the ships arriving and maybe the standing stones in the far distance.

The second one’s more minimalistic, for this one I was thinking of a similar central composition for each issue’s cover; so this one has a standing stone, and the second could perhaps feature Macbeth and an upright war banner – that sort of thing.

The last one doesn’t have to have the circular graphic design. I was playing around with designs that looked like a crown.”

issue 1 cover conceptscover_inkv2Whitney, Kyla, and I loved the design of cover 1, but felt that with so much going on we lost the witches who wanted to be the focus. We also felt that while cover 3 had a strong focus on the witches, cover 2 had the most potential for future covers following a similar design aesthetic. Whitney suggested taking the braided knotwork bands from cover 1 and adding them to cover 2 to help the series logo stand out from the image itself.

The inks looked really good so the next step was to add color. Here we played around with a few different ideas. White background, colored background, different color fires. We wanted to subtly sell that something supernatural was occurring here. These aren’t just women standing around a fire, these are magical beings. I suggested that we color the sky in that muddled yellow green that you only see during tornadoes and Whitney suggested that we change the color of the fire to blue or green to make it more magical. Since fairy fire (naturally occurring flames that happen in swamps) is blue, we went with that. Having all of these colors be natural, but still unusual to find in nature helps us ground our magic in a more real (and hopefully more unnerving) place.

issue 1 cover color ideasWith the colors complete, Jillian Crab designed our logo and actually nailed it right away. I love that our names are in a very old, gothic-looking style and that she kept that feeling while making the actual title a little tattered. It looks like it’s been through some toil and trouble itself. Also the gradient not only echoes the color in our braiding, but gives it a slightly ominous feeling.

Toil-and-Trouble-Main-Cover-by-Kyla-VanderklugtBet you never realize so much work went into a cover! Special thanks to the art, design and editorial team on this book, they not only do amazing work, but are putting with all of my foibles and historical fact-checking while creating that amazing work.

Issue 1 of Toil and Trouble by myself, Mairghread Scott, and Kelly & Nichole Matthews will be available September 2nd at your local comic shop and on digital platforms. Issue 2 is now available for pre-order and you can get the whole series at Boom Studios website. Stay tuned for future looks behind the scenes of Toil and Trouble.

Til then, Hail and Farewell!

 

 

Earlier this week, I discussed the design process for the three witches, Smertae, Riata and Cait from my new comic series, Toil and Trouble with Kelly & Nichole Matthews. However, what adaptation of Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Macbeth could be complete without Macbeth and Lady Macbeth?

When I approached the design process for the human characters, it was important to me that they be very grounded in reality and match the actual history of the time, so that they would contrast nicely with the supernatural elements of our witches. The real King Macbeth lived in 11th century Scotland, so that is where my research began. I compiled a secret Pinterest board full of all the reference images I could find. Everything from clothes to ships to furniture to archaeological evidence from the time. I even traveled to Scotland to visit museums and castles, taking hundreds of reference photos.

Macbeth design Kyla

Character Design by Kyla Vanderklugt

Remember that I mentioned it can be hard to find images from a specific area and time period and one of my tricks was to look for specific historical figures for reference? Well the people in Macbeth’s area didn’t leave a lot of records about their fashion. But the people that lived to the south of them, the Anglo-Saxons, had a ton of stuff, especially in Macbeth’s time period, where they were fighting the Normans. By looking at examples of their fashion and comparing it to Norman fashion and the few references for Scottish fashion I could find (aided by the local Scottish museums I saw on my trip), I think we were able to come up with some likely outfits for our characters. Special shout-out to the SCA (a group of medieval reenactors who do fabulous research) and the Bayeux Tapestry (a giant, embroidered graphic novel of sorts that shows the Norman Conquest of England). P.S. As a cross-stitcher, I have a special love for this tapestry because a friend told me they got to see it in person and the back is nowhere near “as nice as the front”. In your face ladies who say your back needs to look like your front!

I digress.

So where did we start with Macbeth’s design? Here is my initial description to Kyla Vanderklugt.

Macbeth: A man in his later middle-ages, starting to go gray. Macbeth is still very much a warrior, but is starting to pass his prime (think Eddard Stark from GoT) and his age only seems to compound itself as our story goes on. Still, when he smiles he smiles with his eyes, a dazzling forest green that still look young.

We know that Macbeth was called “ruddy” in descriptions of him, which can mean anything from darker skinned (like you see in Kyla’s design) to essentially tan from being outside, to rosy cheeked, to having red hair. We decided to go with the idea that Macbeth was dark-haired (to contrast with Smertae and Banquo, the two characters around him most often) but tanned from being outside all the time.

Macbeth kickingshoes

Art by Kelly and Nichole Matthews

Also, as I dug deeper, we realized Macbeth was mostly likely born around 1005, so he would only have been 35 at the time he became king. So you see Macbeth got aged down and bulked up a bit in the transition from Kyla to the Matthews’ sisters design. The Scots seemed to make a big deal about their kings being active and physically fit men though, so I think our final designs really fit the bill.

Nitpicker’s note: I did also find reference to Macbeth being “cat eyed” but my sources so completely disagreed on what the heck that meant, I had to disregard it.

Next, to match our lovely Macbeth, we must include our Lady Macbeth to match.

lady macbeth Kyla

Character Design by Kyla Vanderklugt

Ah, Lady Macbeth, one of the most universally hated women in all fiction. Most people don’t realize that she is also based on a real person. The actual Lady Macbeth was named Gruoch and Macbeth was her second husband. She also had a son, Lulach, that she brought to her marriage…and that’s about all we know. No age, no physical descriptions, nada. We can guess she was a bit older than Macbeth (him being her second husband and her being his first wife) and Shakespeare does reference that Lady Macbeth had a child at one point (though he never says what happened to them). Everything else is up for grabs. so here’s where we started when I described her to Kyla.

Lady Macbeth: A middle-aged dark haired woman. Lady Macbeth is the kind of perfect that’s been hollowed out by disappointment. She’s lost  weight at some point and there’s a limpness to her body and her breasts.

And you can see that’s exactly what we got. I love her design and you can see it transition quite well in this flashback from the Matthews’ sisters. She got filled out a bit more, especially in her flashbacks, which are supposed to be Lady Macbeth at her happiest. But, unlike every Hollywood movie ever, she isn’t 18 married to a 50 year old. And while she’s pretty, she’s not a supermodel dropped into 11th century Scotland.

lady macbeth kickingshoes

Flashback Art by Kelly and Nichole Matthews

Some sources indicate she might have had some embroidery on her clothes or more jewelry, but I preferred to give her a slightly more streamlined design so it would stay consistent. Despite my rambley posts, we are a graphic novel, not a history textbook.

Anyway, now that you’ve met the major cast of Toil and Trouble, I hope you’ll come back for more! Stay tuned for future posts looking at background design, cover design, our historical research and the scripting process. 

Toil and Trouble #1 will be available in stores and digitally on September 2nd and can be pre-ordered at your local comic shop with the form below or you can get a subscription at the Boom Studios website.

Toil_and_Trouble_order_form

The central characters in my new comic series, Toil and Trouble are the three witches of Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Macbeth. In the play, these women function as supernatural seers delivering two prophecies to Macbeth that inspire Macbeth’s treachery and eventually lead to his downfall. The premise behind the series is to retell the story of Macbeth from the point of view of these three witches to uncover the true motivation behind their role in Macbeth’s fate.

In this series of blog posts, we’ll be looking at the design process for the witches and the thoughts that went into both their look and their characterization in the book. In our initial pitch, all of the witches were going to be completely nude as they are supernatural beings with no need for clothes and a lack of clothes would underscore when our “normal” characters can and can’t see them. (Also, while the entertainment industry seems to almost require partial female nudity, there’s something about non-sexual, full-frontal female nudity that still makes many people uncomfortable. We toyed with the idea of nudity to essentially put our audience on an uneasy footing right from the start). This was later changed to help the book get a teen rating and be more appropriate for schools and libraries. So fair warning, there will be some nudity in these posts.

Actually, I wanted to take a moment and say this was a special concern for me with Cait because she looks so young. The idea of the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone were crucial to our design concept, so Cait really needed to look young to fulfill that part of the trinity. But while we never intended to treat her in a sexual manner, I’ll admit I was kept up at night by the prospect of being called a child pornographer. I want to tip my hat to Sarah Stone for doing such an amazing design of Cait that kept her from feeling at all sexual, even fully naked. These are the kinds of struggles you have when you’re making art.

Cait initial sketch

Initial Character Sketch by Sarah Stone

Anyway let’s take a closer look at Cait,  who in the play is known as the “First Witch”. Cait is the peacemaker in our trio of witches and looks like she is a pre-teen girl despite actually being the oldest of the witches. All of the witches are tied to an element and Cait’s is earth. We also wanted to play with the idea of the maiden-mother-crone cycle, so Cait is representative of the Maiden. Here were my initial character design directions:

Cait:

Element: Earth

Type: Maiden

Colors brown skin (like soil), pale hair, black tattoos like vines creeping through her skin. Younger than Smertae and almost childlike with a teen build, Cait is wide-eyed with hair like a tangle of branches which leaf, bloom and shed their leaves throughout the story. Quiet, Cait sees much and says little. She’s often the last of the group to make a move, slow to change and to anger and wary of making a misstep.

Her familiar, Paddock, is a black adder and usually coiled around her, preferring to stay in close physical contact whenever possible.

Cait color

Final Colored Design by Sarah Stone

All of the witches are meant to have supernatural elements that set them apart from the mortal characters in the book. They each have tattoos or magical markings with Cait’s being the tree branches that grow directly out of her skin. It was decided early on that these branches would almost be like the horns or antlers of an animal so you’ll notice a stag-like quality to them.  Graves from the time period she lived in (around 6,000 BCE) show that animal pieces were buried with people and I liked the idea that Cait might have been buried with a pair of antlers on her head a la the Celtic deity, Cernunnos.

When artist Sarah Stone designed the witches, these were her thoughts behind the design:

Blonde hair, perhaps so light it’s almost white. Frizzy, tighter curls that loop around branches and leaves. wide, large golden eyes or maybe darker eyes, to seem more faun-like. Branches almost form antler-esque silhouette perhaps? There can be three prominent ‘horns’. most childlike proportions: small breasted and a petite frame. shortest. Branches envelop and even appear to grow under her skin in some places. Her snake familiar can coil around her and her branches.

Later when we added clothes, we looked at the furs and leathers being worn in the Neolithic era. The cut of her outfit is based off the clothing found on a Neolithic man in the Alps. I noticed it had a very similar design and material make-up to traditional Inuit clothing, which is where we got the idea for the contrasting color stripes. We wanted something that would show off the branches growing out of her arms and legs, so we took away the leggings she probably would have worn and rounded out the outfit with some Neolithic jewelry.

Cait Kickingshoes

Art by Kelly and Nichole Matthews

One of the coolest things about a character design is seeing how other artists interpret it. After Sarah designed the three witches, cover artist Kyla Vanderklugt and interior artists Kelly and Nichole Matthews had to bring that design to life on the page. The strong elements that were important to us from the start (her branches, her darker skin, her child-like appearance), are all noticeable in every incarnation even as little aspects may change with each artist’s style.

Cait Kyla

Art by Kyla Vanderklugt

When the series opens, Cait awaits the return of Smertae, the witch that Riata exiled many years ago, and she hopes that Riata and Cait can reconcile. She sees the others as her family and wants that family to be happy and whole once more.

Cait believes that the witches must unite in order to watch over Scotland. As our story continues, Cait must try to keep her fellow witches in line as they battle over the heart of a king and the soul of a nation.

Stay tuned for future posts about the designs of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Toil and Trouble will be available in stores and digitally on September 2nd and can be pre-ordered at your local comic shop with the form below or you can get a subscription at the Boom Studios website.Toil_and_Trouble_order_form

The central characters in my new comic series, Toil and Trouble are the three witches of Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Macbeth. In the play, these women function as supernatural seers delivering two prophecies to Macbeth that inspire Macbeth’s treachery and eventually lead to his downfall. The premise behind the series is to retell the story of Macbeth from the point of view of these three witches to uncover the true motivation behind their role in Macbeth’s fate.

In this series of blog posts, we’ll be looking at the design process for the witches and the thoughts that went into both their look and their characterization in the book. In our initial pitch, all of the witches were going to be completely nude as they are supernatural beings with no need for clothes and a lack of clothes would underscore when our “normal” characters can and can’t see them. (Also, while the entertainment industry seems to almost require partial female nudity, there’s something about non-sexual, full-frontal female nudity that still makes many people uncomfortable. We toyed with the idea of nudity to essentially put our audience on an uneasy footing right from the start). This was later changed to help the book get a teen rating and be more appropriate for schools and libraries. So fair warning, there will be some nudity in these posts.

Riata bw design

Initial Character Sketch by Sarah Stone

Last week we met Smertae, now let’s take a look at Riata,  who in the play is known as the “Second Witch”. Riata is the leader of our trio of witches and looks like she is in her forties so she has a more angular frame and some gray hair. All of the witches are tied to an element and Riata’s is air. We also wanted to play with the idea of the maiden-mother-crone cycle, so Riata is representative of the crone. Here were my initial character design directions:

Riata:

Element: Air

Type: Crone

Riata Color Design

Final Colored Design by Sarah Stone

Riata’s a cold woman that sees four steps ahead of everyone else and loves nothing more than to move pieces on the chessboard. The kind of woman you always expect to have unusually pointed K9s. Her tattoos are red and angular.

Her familiar, Graymalkin, is a red kite (a type of hawk native to Scotland), always on the hunt. [Note: In folklore a Graymalkin refers to a cat or winged cat that served witches. But since the other familiars’ names don’t reference a specific design and since our familiars are shape-shifters, we made Graymalkin a bird most of the time.]

All of the witches are meant to have supernatural elements that set them apart from the mortal characters in the book. They each have tattoos or magical markings with Riata’s being done in red. I also wanted her tattoos to be angular and severe so I used a lot of reference material from wind burns and severely dried skin. I wanted Riata to look like her tattoos were made from her skin starting to break open. Riata also has blackened hands with taloned fingers like a bird of prey which sharpen and grow when she is angry or using her magic. As the book goes on, you’ll see this blackness creep up as if her skin is necrotic.

When artist Sarah Stone designed the witches, these were her thoughts behind the design:

Dark hair, straightest. The most mature, and the tallest. Her frame can be almost elvish perhaps. Longer face and half lidded, cold, but beautiful piercing eyes. Pointed canines. Feathers break her silhouette, sometimes seemingly coming from her hair. Overly long nails like talons, stained black. Her tattoos could have the texture of burnt wood, like they are burns but not of flesh. When she casts, perhaps red flame or smoke bleeds from them.

Riata Kickingshoes

Art by Kelly and Nichole Matthews

Later when we added clothes, we researched what was being worn around the first and second century, which was also the time of the Celtic hero, Boudicca, who became a strong inspiration for Riata’s look. Since the witches are each from different time periods of Scotland’s history, their clothing became an essential clue to their history but it can be hard to find clothing reference from so long ago. Since Riata’s story also relates to the Roman Invasion and is closest in time to Boudicca, I was able to research her clothing by looking for articles related to what Boudicca would have actually looked like. Note: Riata would have likely worn plaid, but plaid is REALLY hard to draw consistently especially on non-formfitting clothes. Sometimes you need to compromise.

One of the coolest things about a character design is seeing how other artists interpret it. After Sarah designed the three witches, cover artist Kyla Vanderklugt and interior artists Kelly and Nichole Matthews had to bring that design to life on the page. The strong elements that were important to us from the start (her long hair, her tattoos and talon hands, her pale skin), are all noticeable in every incarnation even as little aspects may change with each artist’s style.

Riata Kyla

Art by Kyla Vanderklugt

When the series opens, Riata awaits the return of Smertae, the witch she exiled to the sea years ago, while also preparing Scotland’s forces for a confrontation with Norway.

Riata believes that she has foreseen the path to the best fate for Scotland and needs her fellow witches Smertae and Cait to help her fulfill it. Riata hopes Smertae’s exile has proven to her that she needs to fall in line, because she needs to be able to trust the women at her side. As our story continues, Riata must face the darkness of her own past, even as she battles for the very soul of the land she loves.

Stay tuned for future posts about the designs of Cait, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Toil and Trouble will be available in stores and digitally on September 2nd and can be pre-ordered at your local comic shop with the form below or you can get a subscription at the Boom Studios website.

Toil_and_Trouble_order_form

The central characters in my new comic series, Toil and Trouble are the three witches of Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Macbeth. In the play, these women function as supernatural seers delivering two prophecies to Macbeth that inspire Macbeth’s treachery and eventually lead to his downfall. The premise behind the series is to retell the story of Macbeth from the point of view of these three witches to uncover the true motivation behind their role in Macbeth’s fate.

Smertae rough design

Initial Character Sketch by Sarah Stone

In this series of blog posts, we’ll be looking at the design process for the witches and the thoughts that went into both their look and their characterization in the book. In our initial pitch, all of the witches were going to be completely nude as they are supernatural beings with no need for clothes and a lack of clothes would underscore when our “normal” characters can and can’t see them. (Also, while the entertainment industry seems to almost require partial female nudity, there’s something about non-sexual, full-frontal female nudity that still makes many people uncomfortable. We toyed with the idea of nudity to essentially put our audience on an uneasy footing right from the start). This was later changed to help the book get a teen rating and be more appropriate for schools and libraries. So fair warning, there will be some nudity in these posts.

Our lead character is Smertae who in the play is known as the “Third Witch”. Smertae is sort of the middle sister in our trio of witches and looks like she is in her late twenties. All of the witches are tied to an element and Smertae’s is water. We also wanted to play with the idea of the maiden-mother-crone cycle, so Smertae is representative of the mother. Here were my initial character design directions:

Smertae: the main character.

Element: Water

Smertae design

Final Colored Design by Sarah Stone

Type: Mother

Colors: Red Hair, white skin, blue tattoos. Her tattoos should be almost bruised into her skin. Smertae should have slighty rounded features with wild hair. Her hair should always look like beach hair, like it just dried.

Her familiar, Harpier, is a white crab and frequently put upon, fidgeting constantly.

All of the witches are meant to have supernatural elements that set them apart from the mortal characters in the book. They each have tattoos or magical markings with Smertae’s being done in woad, a blue dye made from plants that the Picts were known to paint themselves with. Smertae also has spikes like a crab that pierce her skin and grow when she uses her magic.

When artist Sarah Stone designed the witches, these were her thoughts behind the design:

Smertae: red hair, loose flowing curls, angular but perhaps the most ‘curvy’, middle height of the three sisters. pale hazel or gray eyes. tiger claw necklace “piercings” built into and around spiral tattoos that look like bruises instead of ink. old scars. Her silhouette is broken by small sharp thorns (like the tiger claws), similarly to a crab they come in threes.

Smertae kyla

Art by Kyla Vanderklugt

Later when we added clothes, we researched how the early Picts wore simple dresses and tunics. Sarah wanted to make sure the dress still felt stylish so she added the cutaways on the arms and legs to show off Smertae’s spikes and tattoos. we also thought it gave her a tattered, more realistic look. If you had spikes coming out of your hips, your skirt wouldn’t last very long either.

One of the coolest things about a character design is seeing how other artists interpret it. After Sarah designed the three witches, cover artist Kyla Vanderklugt and interior artists Kelly and Nichole Matthews had to bring that design to life on the page. The strong elements that were important to us from the start (her hair, her spikes, her dress), are all noticeable in every incarnation even as little aspects may change with each artists’s style.

Smertae preview

Art by Kelly and Nichole Matthews

When the series opens, Smertae is returning to Alba (aka Scotland) after years in exile. She will have to come to terms her fellow witches, Cait and Riata, who have very different plans for the fate of their homeland. Smertae confronts the mistakes of her past, even as she battles for the soul of the man she believes should be Scotland’s king.

Stay tuned for future posts about the designs of Cait, Riata, and some of our other characters. Toil and Trouble will be available in stores and digitally on September 2nd and can be pre-ordered at your local comic shop with the form below.

NEWSFLASH!

My creator-owned series The Third Witch is now called Toil and Trouble. Same great book written by me with amazing art by Kelly and Nichole Matthews, but with a new title.

If you’ve already pre-ordered Toil and Trouble under its old title, have no fear. The order code is the same, so your request will still go through. For those of you that haven’t ordered Toil and Trouble yet, we have an updated order form just for you. Procrastinators!Toil_and_Trouble_order_form

Click here for a printable version of the pre-order form.

“But Mairghread,” you might be wondering, “what is this comic all about?”

Toil and Trouble is a perspective adaptation of the classic play, Macbeth, by William Shakespeare. This comic series tells the story of Macbeth from the perspective of the three witches who appear early in the play to deliver a prophecy that Macbeth will soon become king of Scotland. In this story, readers follow Smertae, Cait, and Riata, the fates of Scotland, as they battle each other for the soul of Macbeth and the future of their nation. This is a supernatural horror tale that utilizes the comics medium to delve deeper into Shakespeare’s play and tell an entirely new story.

Pre-ordering is a great way to make sure you get the book, but it also tells stores that this will be a popular book. So if you are looking to support books that you enjoy, make sure to pre-order.

Toil and Trouble will be available on September 2nd. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be posting some cool behind the scenes looks at the characters, art and writing process, so stay tuned.

Thank You,
Mairghread