10 July 07 This week designer Frank Victoria reveals never seen before concept illustrations of the Jane and The Dragon kitchen.

Last week, two of the designers that worked on the concept illustrations behind Jane and The Dragon, Frank Victoria and Rebekah Tisch, hopped onto the Weta Forums, to answer as many of your questions about the look of the series as they could, and it was really popular!

This week, Frank agreed to show us a few previously unseen images from his concept work on Pepper's environment, the castle's kitchen. Check out what Frank has to say about these illustrations:

Above: Illustration of Pepper's kitchen, by Frank Victoria.

"Originally, when we discussed Pepper's character, she was going to spend most of her time inside because she suffered from acrophobia: fear of open spaces", says Frank. "Another idea was that she was very fond of Rake the Gardener. At one stage, we were discussing the idea of him suffering from claustrophobia: fear of confined spaces, meaning it would make it almost impossible for the pair of them to meet, and which in turn made for an interesting design angle!

"These two illustrations show the ideas we were discussing: making Pepper's inside world very warm and welcoming, as it was the place where she would spend a great deal of her waking life. As you can see its like a 'little world' unto itself!

"Here you can see the opening of the window to the right - this is because I played around with the idea of her kitchen being slightly below the ground, and we thought by placing a window there, perhaps that was one way Rake and Pepper could meet in the middle of their fears.

"Everything in these inital concept drawings were 'Janified', in that John Craney the Art Director, asked us to make everything look as though it belonged in the Jane world. For example, if you look at the implements in the kitchen, you can see that they are charactured to match the 'Jane' style; they are all overtly round, all the handles are big. We ended up toning that theme down in the final stages, but this was one of the early concepts."

Above: Pepper's sleeping quarters, in the castle kitchen.

"Here is an early concept for Pepper's bedroom - effectively the kitchen! She sleeps alongside the food, on the wheat bags. As you can see, she's got a chest of clothes to the left, which even has a sieve in there, because she's so keen on cooking!

"Every character in Kippernia has a special emblem, and before Pepper was given hers, I put one on her cushion - you can see it here in blue. The final design for Pepper was a maroon colour."

Frank and Rebekah will visit the Weta Forums again on Thursday 12 July - so make sure you log on and register your question!

If you like these images, check out the 'Concept Artwork' folder at the Weta Gallery, which features every image we've revealed from this series!