Artists Alley: Sara Alfageeh draws an RPG punch buggy

Sara Alfageeh was once told by a friend that her style was pretty much taking a concept and shaking it up in a bag of rocks. Whatever that means, it's turned out to be pretty awesome.

The upcoming graphic novel Squire, for which she is both the creative director and artist, gives us a glimpse into how Alfageeh imagines genre and RPG tropes in her own unique way. She isn't the type of artist who feels she has to explain everything, either. She prefers being that person watching a horror movie who would rather not see the monster than have it jumping out of the shadows and into her face.

Alfageeh also believes a person's art style is a mashup of "the stuff you enjoy doing … and your special brand of laziness."

Special brand of laziness? Success is buried somewhere in that. The artist describes it as what defines when you decide enough is enough for a piece and when you continue to develop it. She enjoys inking (check out all her intricate line work) and hates shading, which is what makes her art her own.

Something that inspired what would ultimately end up as the epic adventure Squire was Alfageeh's vision of "this hyper-capable, sort of like feral child in the woods," which explains the creature head her human character is riding.

Huge clouds and billows of smoke also set Alfageeh's work apart, as you can see in the trippy floating bus — at least it appears to be flowing — from Squire. She always wants her readers to feel like what is caught on the page is that moment in time frozen right before the previous and next moments, when one of her characters could leap into action.

This is why you'll notice that Alfageeh's characters never face the audience. They're always looking somewhere else — at another character or frame — because that give you the feeling that there something out there, beyond what you’re seeing right now, that they see as worth looking at.

If you want to see how this otherworldly punch buggy with a beast's head sticking out of it turns out, keep watching!

This article was contributed to by Elizabeth Rayne.