O Love How Deep

"H-how can you s-say that...? W-what I said was..."

"Hah! Oh dear child. My love for you is deeper than the sharpest words could ever pierce.”

This is Molly and her "Bibbie" Marraine (pronounced MAH-rreign). It's French. It's part of a scene of a book series I have in my head that I want to do someday. This scene meant so much to me that I wanted to draw it. I used Disney-style eyes for both of them because that was how they were drawn in my head. It goes along with the themes of the story, and I like how it turned out. I was worried it wouldn't mesh with my regular drawing style, but it works. Marraine's design is also based on The Spider-wick Chronicles Dyrad. In retrospect, if I could change one thing about the drawing, I would have drawn them closer. I also like how different they ended up looking. That was always my intention, but I'm still pleased with it. It's basically my first time drawing toes... I guess I have the same problem with them that I do with hands.

I won't spoil Molly's story just in case this idea goes somewhere, but she's not exactly the most well-treated person in the whole world. It's given her some trust issues so that she ends up pushing away all the people trying to help her, even her beloved Bibbie. When it all goes south, as the audience would know it will, Marraine still comes back for her. This scene ended up very much based on my own personal experience with God. I've yelled at Him and pushed Him away more times than I can count or remember, but He loves me much much more than I could ever hurt Him (not that I can). We all want a someone who will love us with a storybook love. He's real. I've met him. And He's so much better than I ever imagined.

Outside In

Audio

As I've mentioned in passing, one of my personal favorite movies is PIXAR's Inside Out. This is particularly because the main character Joy is so relatable for me, and the journey they put her on was one I needed as well. Late last night I was considering what it would be like if Sadness had been the primary emotion instead of Joy. It would've created an entirely different story and moral (that, in my opinion, wouldn't have been as applicable for an American audience). I wrote the script for some of what it would be like right there, but I knew I had to draw out at least a rough version if I wanted to retain it. Then I realized I had to record audio for it to remember the voices, and then I overslept this morning. 

This is the product of that. I was just trying to quickly get down the big and little sister relationship I imagined (with little but taller Joy hanging around older but shorter Sadness, something I felt familiar with as a younger sibling myself). I also included the audio I voiced here as a link. Neither the rough sketches nor the audio comes close to capturing the wonderfulness of the original characters, but I did manage to communicate what I was going for.

I briefly struggled with over-pessimism and finding it difficult to be optimistic about anything at one point in my life. I recently had the chance to look back over the notebook that documented that period. It was a bit shocking, especially since optimism comes so easily to me today. But I knew what it was like to feel that being optimistic is a luxury and a distraction that can't be afforded if you're going to get things done. And I also knew that Joy's creators had originally (rightly) worried that a character who was happy all of the time could come across as annoying. So I drew from that to imagine this variation on these two characters.
As you can see, this Joy's hair is a bit more all over the place to express her distractibility. In contrast, I gave Sadness a headband to subtly show this human's Sadness' more focused nature. Here Sadness tries to order the world the best she can, but Joy has always inadvertently gotten in the way. If you've already listened to the audio, you may have caught that Sadness calls their human "Chrissy." Yes, I decided it should be a different human than Riley. The creators of Inside Out chose the name Riley based on someone close to them. I did the same for this other character.

God taught me optimism through his faithfulness, and he taught me to cry again through this beautiful movie. I owe him my emotions and my very soul. I'm constantly reminded of that here in the emotional stress and soul-weariness of college, and I'm thankful for it. Thank you, God.