New York, New York

The first page of the latest Magellan chapter starts in New York and, since it's always good to kick off with an establishing shot, I thought I'd stick in a bit of actual skyline rather than some random building. Since I've never been to New York (let alone the United States) I did a little bit of hunting around for some reference shots - these days the Google Images search makes this a rather quick and painless process.

Of course, the search returned a number of skylines that were pre-2001 and therefore include the World Trade Centre. It got me thinking - Magellan is set in similar world to ours but its history started to diverge around the 1930s due to all those superheroic goings-ons. Would 9/11 have happened in the Magellan universe? Probably not. So should my depiction of the skyline include the twin towers? I sought some feedback from fellow Graphic Smashers and the Magellan forum.

Some suggested the towers could have been previously demolished by a super battle - which was plausible considering the number of structures routinely destroyed in comics like the X-Men, et al. The general consensus was that it would be fine as long as it wasn't done in poor taste - although Reinder suggested drawing four towers! I did like that idea but in the end I found an amazing panorama of the skyline - here is a tiny, tiny, tiny, teensy version of it...

The original file was huge! I chose to draw the area shaded red... and, even though it is only a small fraction of the total area, there was still an amazing amount of detail involved. It took forever to draw and colour - and I'm pretty happy with the final result although the angle to the ground is a bit out of whack in a couple of the buildings...

Remarkably I got positive responses from a couple of readers (one a fellow Smasher) who reside in New York. Apparently this is most likely a view from the Empire State Building. The scale of the city is actually a bit beyond my Sydney based brain's capacity to fully take it all in. I've certainly seen New York in plenty of movies and TV shows before but not quite like this. New York looks awesome and I will get there one day.

One thing I like about cartooning is that it gives me ample opportunity to learn new things, and not just about drawing but about places, people and cultures.