Hal Foster on the inspiration for Prince Valiant characters

SABA: ...what methods did you use to write the story? How did you settle what it was going to involve?
FOSTER: Well, those ideas have to come to you.
Mrs. FOSTER: He just picks them out of thin air, I think.

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Mrs. FOSTER: Or something that you read.
FOSTER: Yes.
Mrs. FOSTER: It would stick in his mind, or just seeing people. When we were in Paris, and at the restaurant there, a waiter waited on us. Harold kept looking at him, and got his pencil and made a sketch of him, and said, "There's a story in that fellow's face," and he was in the script for long time.
FOSTER: Yes.
Mrs. FOSTER: What did you call him, the, he was the-
FOSTER: I don't know, but he was a fusty-looking guy, never had his hair combed, and nothing fit. So I made him a squire to Sir Gawain, Sir Gawain was always a handsome-
Mrs. FOSTER: Served our soup with his thumb in it, you know [laughter].
SABA: Oh, I see.
Mrs. FOSTER: And then our younger son brought home a series of [photos], he was going in for photography. He's one of those young fellows that goes from one thing to another. He brought home some candid shots that he had taken, and he had an enlargement--a head of a girl, remember her?
FOSTER: Yes.
Mrs. FOSTER: And the minute he looked at her, "Oh, can I have that, Arthur?" he said, "That girl's got a story in her face," well, maybe he didn't know what the story was, but-
SABA: But there's something inspiring.
Mrs. FOSTER: That made him think of something. And he used to write down, you had a little black book that, when you'd get an idea, you'd write it down in, and sometimes, enlarge on it. So when he first did that, everything reminded him. For instance, one of our friends' mother, the lady-in-waiting-
FOSTER: Oh, yes.
Mrs. FOSTER: Theresa.
FOSTER: Theresa Armstrong.
Mrs. FOSTER: Yes, what did you call her? Oh, she had been a lady-in-waiting, and she became a queen of Spain, queen of Sweden.
FOSTER: Oh, I said she used to come into the room like floundering ship.
SABA: That's great.
FOSTER: She dominated everything.
Mrs. FOSTER: He's used lots of people, but they never knew it.