This is my entry for the shipping fan art contest of Studio Half Tone. To be honest I couldn’t think of any pairings myself, but I saw the comment of a_weird_plant and got inspired. In part 02 of The Interview (chapter 0) Christy is watching a detective movie and a_weird_plant thought it would be fun to pair Christy with the detective of the movie (Carmen Sandiego style!).
I was somewhat familiar with Carmen Sandiego. I was aware of the new Netflix series, but for me it started with a game called Interpol. When we were visiting one of my uncles he allowed me to play some games on his PC. Seeing I was the only kid there this was a nice way to pass the time. I assume Interpol was a cracked version of the first Carmen Sandiego game. While interesting I had no clue what I was doing, just trying stuff out. I wouldn’t think of the game until much later when I saw screenshots for the snes game Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? in a game magazine. The magazine also mentioned the cartoon of the same name. Didn’t play this game or watched the cartoon, but it’s in consideration now. I did start watching the Netflix series. Let’s see how long I can stay on one episode per day instead of going on a binge.
Back to the fan art. IN/DISSONANCE takes places in Rotterdam and Studio Half Tone has done a good job of bringing that visually to the comic. I already had main character Christy Tao as one part of the pairing so along with the location makes for a fun play on the Where On/In … Is Carmen Sandiego titles.
Now Christy is dressed in the style on Carmen Sandiego (Netflix version), but since Half Tone did such a good job with the colour assigning I had to go with Christy’s green instead of red. Of course with the fill layers in Affinity it was very easy to create an alternative version (picture 2) for those that insist it has to be red.
As you can see for yourself I had no visual reference for the detective (spoiler). But I could at least make his outfit match Christy’s. I still wanted to keep the detective a bit of a mysterious figure, which fits well with IN/DISSONANCE (another spoiler!) so face shade it is. The only reason the detective got the red outfit is because I wanted a nice contrast with Christy’s.
Now they are inside a RET tram (streetcar, trolley?), but since that wouldn’t ring a bell for everyone I thought the art could do with some known Rotterdam landmarks. I got the pictures of Pixabay marked as free to use. Since Rotterdam is a harbour city I thought a life preserver would make for a nice frame. I decided to give the frame a yellow/orange scheme so it looks like a game element. One that you would want to be very noticeable.
I did consider using the colours of the Rotterdam flag on the life preservers, but there was already a lot of green in the illustration. So I thought some character portraits would be nice to add (pictures 5 and 6).
If you enjoy time-lapse video’s please a look here: time-lapse video Where in Rotterdam is Christy Tao.
I closing I can recommend IN/DISSONANCE on Webtoons for a good read.
