Tally Revealed!

Posted on by scott

I was all ready to reveal the manga version of Tally this week, and then realized that I didn’t have the final versions of the right pages. Oops. Then there was a bit of miscommunication, but now at last I have them!

So we are delaying Fan Art Friday (often known as Fan Art Sunday) for the Tally character reveal.

Remember that Shay’s Story (AKA “The Uglies Manga”) is all from Shay’s POV, and therefore starts about six months before the events of Uglies, back when Shay and Zane are pals. So Tally doesn’t enter until Zane and Shay have planned to run away and then “chickened out.” (That’s what they told Tally in Pretties, but it’s more complicated than that in reality.)

But when Tally appears, we are fully into the same events as Uglies, so some of the scenes below will be familiar. It’s kind of interesting, duplicating some Uglies scenes almost exactly, but in an entirely new context and from a different point of view.

Of course, there are some times when Devin and I decided to skip over a lot of the scenes in Uglies, using the wonder of montage! You may recognize these flashes from the book, when Tally and Shay are getting to be friends.

Here’s a close-up of a familiar scene in Uglies that gets swept past in this montage:

This scene is also directly from the book, but here only lasts one frame. It’s quite illuminating to see Steven’s vision of it:

What’s interesting is, when you read the book, Tally is the protagonist and is therefore the center of attention in this scene. But in the version above, you can see that Shay is the featured character. She’s literally foregrounded.

And finally, here’s an argument between Tally and Shay at a certain key point in the story:

Click here for a bigger version of this one.

The dialog is directly from the book, but as you can see, Tally has her back to us and we see Shay’s expression.

I didn’t realize any of this (at least, the visual aspect of it) until I started to look for shots of Tally, and realized that there were very few of her. Most of the time, she’s in the background and Shay’s doing something. Because the comic is all about Shay.

But there is a great shot of Tally from near the end of the book, when they’re in the Smoke. So here’s frizzy-haired, not very confident, under-suspicion Tally:

Hope you like her.

70 thoughts on “Tally Revealed!”

  7. Hey, Josh. Do you know the procedure for our chat commenting/fan club meetings? We only do that on FAF posts, and leave the actual “wow, this is sooo cool” and such for all the other things.
    I didn’t want you to get all lonely over here 🙂 I’m going back to the FAF now. Bye!

  9. It’s not how I imagined Tally, but it totally fits! She looks awesome!! 😀
    Who’s next? Dr. Cable?

  15. I’m going to be kind of blunt… isn’t Tally supposed to be pretty, but she only THINKS she’s ugly? I’m not saying she’s ugly by regular standards, just… not very attractive either…

  16. How old is Tally supposed to be? Please do not take offense, but she looks like she’s about seven in the last picture.

  17. I think the pictures look fantastic. Some cartoon-types of art make characters look younger. It’s just a style thing, I think

  20. whoa, this is so weird. this says it was posted on Jan. 28 and all the comments are from the 28th, but today’s the 27th, isn’t it??? Oh, and btw, love the art, and you should do Dr. Cable next!

  31. Also the posts aren’t Australia time – I’m in Australia and it’s not 11 am, it’s 5 pm. I’m not sure what time zone the site is in. 🙂

  32. Cute 😀 I really can’t wait to see the girls as Specials (I seem to be going too fast here but Specials and Extras are like my fave books in the series and I’m a total sucker for ICY stuff >:D)

  33. She is perfect. For a girl, she didn’t spend much time grooming, so when she did, that stood out to me. I absolutely love this series and recommend it as often as I can. Can’t wait for more!~

  36. YOU GUYS HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH I LOVE THIS SERIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    Feel free to come chat with us on last FAF,you will find out very soon that I am ALL UGLIES ALL THE WAY
    UGLIES LIVES

  39. I really like it, but I imagined Tally as being taller. Maybe its just the way the shots are angled.

  44. These are great snapshots. Someone above in the comments said something about Tally’s looks. Well in defense, beauty isn’t all about looks. Beauty is how you perceive it. It’s the whole basis of the series, no? Regular teenage girls are pretty for what they really are, but then they think that they are only pretty if they wear make up (the Surge, if you will.)

  47. AWESOMESAUCE. 🙂 I like how she manages to look ‘ugly’ without actually being ugly. Does that make sense?

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