Chapter 1: Page 19
This week, Kenosh begins to lay out the problem at hand: the Canid and the Ermehn seem to once again at each other’s throats – and with Sunsgrove so close to Canid lands, such a thing suddenly becomes everybody’s problem.
Click for full-size
This week I’ve found myself in the odd position of not being able to show you the entire original page from the 2010 draft of the comic. It’s not that I don’t WANT to (okay, maybe it’s a little of that), but the original draft of the script gave away a lot more detail about the storyline than our final draft.
Click for full-size
The first section doesn’t give anything away, of course – mostly just setting up Kenosh’s news. The entire raison d’être of Kenosh’s visit, however, changed in the newer, post-2010 versions of the script. Whenever I work on a story, I consider there to be no sacred cows – for the longest time, the story had been outlined a certain way, with a certain sequence of events that I’d planned out a long-long time in advance. As we started working through the specifics of the story and the individual beats, we discovered that this scene needed to be rewritten – as well as a number of future scenes.
Click for full-size
It’s always a little hard to rewrite or remove scenes that you’ve been envisioning for years, but I took solace in the fact that the new scenes I wrote are going to be even better than the ones we lost. The story is a living thing – Rachel may come up with a cool sketch for something that we want to work into the story, or I may have an idea for a scene that would help bridge two other scenes – all of these is fair game for Beyond the Western Deep, and it makes the storytelling process that much more interesting.
Excellent panel composition on this page – especially that middle fade. *swoon*
Also, it’s nice to finally be getting into the meat of the plot. Enough with the appetizers! :3
Man, am I loving this story. Just re-read through it all again from the first page, and am in serious awe of the potential this series has. Really good flow with the writing and beautiful (as usual, considering it’s from Rachel) artwork… Keep up the amazing work, guys!
Gotta love it! It;s building up and I’m dying for more! Great job. I love this story!
Woah, so the Tamians and Lutrens are allies of the Canid? Interesting. Well that makes sense, because they are the five kingdoms, all of which try hard to coexist so all peoples not in the kingdoms would automatically not be seen as allies.
I love it when there’s politics.
I envy your skills. Great job, once again. Are you guys at comic-con this year?
Thanks so much everyone for the comments :)
Unfortunately, Sawyer, neither of us were able to make it to SDCC this year. We really wish we could’ve gone – there were some awesome announcements and panels there this year.
I will be at NYCC this October, though!
Okay, this I must admit is a page I was never quite fond of. Mostly because of the layout and design – the writing is as good as ever.
First off, some of the ways the characters are drawn seem a little off, particularly Kenosh in the final panel who looks a bit cruder than usual, and the Ermehn warrior is kinda the same, his body posture and expression kinda awkward.
The layout is also a little strange. I know PB&J praised the middle panel transition, and it’s a great idea, but I don’t think it works as well as it could – the transition takes too long, so most of the panel looks like a large, green-gray void (I understand, it’s in silhouette, but still). The transition in the final panel is better, but the sequence of events before it looks strange – the Canid seem to have come too close to the Ermehn family and don’t even seem to react to them, just looking bored. Maybe it’s supposed to be symbolic, but if it’s supposed to represent some violent encounter or a hasty flight, it comes across as rather odd.
The way Dabheid is squeezed into the tiny panel in the upper corner also looks a little awkward. Maybe his speech bubble could be integrated in some other way, maybe on the previous page, or sharing a panel with Kenosh?
Well, the information conveyed is interesting at least. The conflict between Canid and Ermehn are heating up, and if war breaks out Sunsgrove will be in the middle of it. Given that Sunsgrove is to the south of both of them it raises the question how exactly they’ll be in the “middle” of it. The matter is revealed in the coming pages.
Honestly, I’m wondering just how spoilery that last half of the original draft page would be now, nearly two years later. Although we haven’t really changed the goal of the characters since this point, this is clearly indicating some… complications.