Beyond the Western Deep Production Blog

Going Live!

2011-12-30T12:08:00.001-05:00

Well, it's been a long time coming, but we're finally ready to announce that Beyond the Western Deep will be going live in webcomic form this Sunday (1-1-12)!

On Sunday, we will be posting the first five pages of the story, with one new page uploaded every Saturday thereafter. Rachel and I have been working on this story for a very long time, and we're both very happy to finally be able to share it with everyone.

Now that we have an official website, this blog will fall by the wayside in lieu of weekly posts that will go along with the page updates. We'll be keeping this blog up, but new material will be posted on the website proper from now on.

Thanks to our followers who have stuck with us for so long - we both hope you enjoy the comic as much as we've enjoyed creating it!

www.westerndeep.net

Website Progress

2011-11-27T15:54:00.000-05:00

When making a webcomic, you need two things that are spelled out rather plainly in the name itself: a comic, and a website. As followers of this blog will know, we've been working pretty hard on the comic part for quite some time, but rarely has any mention of the "web" part been made.

Well, I'm here to tell you that yes, the "web" of our webcomic is coming along quite nicely! A lot of progress has been made in the last couple weeks on the layout and content sides of things, and we're excited to get the site off the ground - something that should be happening in the coming weeks.

In addition to the banners and navigational doodads, we're also planning a few extras right off the bat, like a characters page for the main cast. Regular followers will know these guys already, but here's some new art for that section of the website:

Next time we update, I'll have more to show from the website itself. Perhaps even the website itself! Stay tuned!

And We're Back!

2011-10-31T10:55:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the massive wait-time, folks - in addition to getting a sizable chunk of Beyond the Western Deep pages ready for our backlog, we've also been hit pretty hard with work via our day jobs. That said, I'm hoping now that we're starting to get a proper backlog of pages together and are finally piecing together what the webcomic's website will entail, we'll be able to eventually migrate this blog with the new site to keep everything in one place and make updating folks on the progress of the comic an easier endeavor.

That said, how about some in-progress page work to make up for the long silence?

As you might remember from a few posts ago, Rachel put together a fine-looking Felis script. The first use of this in the comic itself was a simple banner in a market square in the first page of chapter one. Almost immediately afterward though, a new idea emerged: what if instead of just adding a few lines of Felis script into the opening "history" sequence, we added the actual Felis art as well?

Rachel quickly pieced together a style loosely based on the Bayeux tapestry that fast-became one of my favorite elements of the newly-redone introductory sequence. These simplified representations of the races, juxtaposed with their "real" forms in Rachel's normal style, really help make the historical events on display look and feel more authentic.

Now that we're buckling down to get the website and page backlog squared away, the blog updates will be a bit sporadic - but it's my hope we can keep a somewhere consistent presence here while we get BWD's new home finalized.

Thanks for hanging in there!

Eisner Win!

2011-07-23T17:28:00.000-04:00

Last night, Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard won the Eisner Award for Best Anthology - turning what was already an incredible thing into something far beyond anything I'd ever hoped for. David Petersen pulled together a veritable dream team of creators for Legends, and I am humbled beyond description to be able to share in this accomplishment.

Three years ago, I met David Petersen in person for the first time, two years ago I introduced him to my friend Sean Rubin, and less than one year ago Sean and I were at the Archaia booth in New York Comic Con signing copies of Legends of the Guard along with several of the other creators. I am truly honored to have been a part of the Legends experience, and I'm confident that Legends: Volume 2 will be just as incredible, if not better, than the original Legends.

In addition to this Eisner news, I figured I would share a little bit of "BWD" stuff with you! A couple posts ago, I brought up our intention to create languages for the different races. Well, Rachel went and actually created a script for the Felis race that we can use in the introduction of the story and beyond.

It's a pretty simple letter-swap, but it looks very cool! There will be a couple minor tweaks to the appearances of certain characters, but for the most part this is pretty accurate to what we'll be using in the comic's pages.

Sunsgrove Sports

2011-07-04T17:22:00.000-04:00

Happy Fourth of July, folks! We've got a handful of pages in the bucket now, and things are starting to fall into a nice groove. Instead of tossing up an in-progress page, I figured I'd show a fun series of sketches that Rachel put together that show some experimentation with Dakkan's design, as well as some notes about a possible Lutren/Tamian sport that resembles baseball.

This is the sort of stuff I love to brainstorm - Rachel will just crank out one of these sketches of her own accord and we'll start imagining the rules for a game like this, how it would've been played, who invented it, or whether it's a sport for kids or adults or both!

While the sport doesn't have a name (yet!) we've got some variations on the rules depending on who plays - either Tamian or Lutren. Being a bit more acrobatic, the Tamian variation involves a batter, a home base, and a series of five "bases" located throughout a series of trees. Think of it as a kind of 3-D baseball or cricket - where the Tamian batter hits a ball with a bat and has to make their way to home base by leaping across the trees as quickly as possible avoiding the 11 strategically-situated defenders. However, unlike baseball, the Tamian batter is able to run to any base they want in any order, so long as they don't get tagged out by a defender carrying the ball.

No batter can occupy the same base at once, but they can run to any base they want as soon as the ball is in the air. This means you could feasibly have five Tamian on base at once. So, why not just immediately go for the home base? The strategy here is how scores are made and counted - the at-bat team gets additional points when they get multiple runs to home base on a single hit.

Stacking the bases, then, proves a risky but potentially useful strategy in grabbing extra points per run. A single run on a single hit nets 1 point, two runs at once nets 3 points, three runs in a single hit gets 5 points, four runs gets 7 points, and getting a full five runs in a single hit offers 10 points.

If a batter is unable to hit the ball after three pitches, the batter is out. When an at-bat player is deemed to be out, either by striking out or by getting tagged, they are permanently out until the teams switch. To switch the in-field and at-bat positions, the in-field team must tag out the entire 11 person at-bat team. Games have 3 innings that can stretch into overtime if necessary.

Similar to cricket, there are no foul balls in the game, however. There are numerous optional field positions that the team captain can deploy their defenders to use to catch balls flying far left, right, even up and behind the batter. If the ball is hit with the bat, it's in play 100% of the time.

This sport probably won't show up in the comic, at least not the story we're going to be starting with, but it could always show up in other stories!

Languages

2011-06-22T22:22:00.002-04:00

This isn't really in keeping with the schedule I'd tried to set for the blog updates, but I figure that with my zany schedule, any time I can stick something cool up, I'd better take advantage of the situation!

In the first page of the comic, we see a busy market near the Spire District of Gair. Originally, a vendor on this page was selling pottery, and there was text on the table letting us know that's what was being sold. However, looking at this, it was decided that the Felis of Gair (and all races of the land) would probably have their own language and written script they would use in their own cities.

And so this began a discussion as to how the different races' languages would look and sound. For the most part, the written languages were meant to mirror the races they were based on. The Tamian, for example, write with a very thin, vertical, tree-like script, with tense, formality, and even variations on the same word being communicated via "branches" on a core letter.

The Felis, on the other hand, have a script that's more rounded and "scratchy", inspired by more Oriental-style writing, with some added arcs that fit right into the Felis architectural motifs of Gair.

As the comic progresses and more of the races' languages are fleshed out, we might put up another one of these kinds of posts, but until then, stay tuned for various comic updates as they occur!

Quin and Crim

2011-06-20T21:24:00.003-04:00

Work continues on the comic as always, though we weren't able to quite throw together a post thanks to professional obligations on both our parts. Still, I don't like leaving you folks hanging for too long without some stuff, so here are some new sketches detailing protagonist Quinlan and the combat trainer, Crim. We'll start with Quinlan (and a bit of Janik):

Quin and Crim have a bit of history that isn't detailed in the comic, which makes it fairly good fodder for the blog!

When he was young Quinlan showed great promise in the Tamian martial art known as Tesque. He wasn't spectacular by any means, but the trainers saw potential in him and helped to mold him into one of the best Tesque practitioners in Sunsgrove.

Crim, however, with his heftier frame and altogether nasty disposition, was passed over for advancement many times. He grew to hate Quinlan, resorting to bullying tactics and altogether striving to make his life miserable.

When Quinlan tried to personally see to it that Crim was given a fair shake by their instructors, Crim was so enraged at the gesture that he nearly knocked Quinlan unconscious during a sparring match, refusing to let up his offense until their instructors physically separated the two.

Many years later, and finally matured, the two Tamian came to tolerate each other's presence as best they could. Crim is now fighting at the Tesque Master level, and considers himself to be the finest warrior in the Tamian Kingdom, and also thought he was a shoo-in for Captain of the Royal Guard when the position opened up.

However, history has a bizarre tendency to repeat itself, and Quinlan was hastily promoted to the position when his grandfather, the former captain, passed away suddenly. In response to the news, Crim vowed that he would publicly embarrass the new captain, proving to all the Tamian people that he was the best fit for the position.

Whether or not he succeeds in doing so is a story left to the pages of the comic!

The Generals

2011-05-20T20:51:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone! Because we missed our post two weeks ago, I'll try to get in two posts this weekend.

Let's start with what the post two weeks ago was supposed to be - character reveals of two of the highest-ranked Canid Generals, the brothers Clovis and Tosch.

Most Canid are conscripted at the age of 18 for a mandatory ten year period, after which they can choose to be released from duty or continue to climb the ranks of the Canid army. Clovis, however, was conscripted into the military at the age of 12 after displaying a certain unnatural aptitude regarding the art of war.

While the young Canid easily impressed his many mentors as a child, as he grew older they became increasingly terrified of his skills (and maniacal tendencies). The Canid officers tried to keep him on a proverbial leash, but Clovis was simply too brilliant a tactician to contain.

When tribes of Ermehn exiles began to step up attacks against the Canid, the military, in a word, "unleashed" Clovis and his brother, Tosch onto the battlefield.

The Ermehn were routed, degraded, and pushed to the verge of outright extinction. Meanwhile, for doing his part to stem the attacks, Clovis and his brother were both promoted to Master General, the highest rank in the military.

Despite Clovis' overt military brilliance, many Canid officers believe that it is his younger brother, the quiet and reserved Tosch, who is the smarter of the pair. While Clovis was busy impressing his superiors and going out of his way to ascend the ranks of the military, Tosch kept himself occupied with study and battlefield theory, honing his technique and letting his brother take all the attention.

Tosch was not conscripted at the age of 12 as his older brother was - though he still managed to impress his elders and join the military at the age of 15. His position alongside his brother at the head of the Canid military was assured when he successfully defended Deltrada Garrison from a horde of Ermehn warriors despite having no supplies, few soldiers, and no chance of reinforcements.

What do these Canid generals have in store for our heroes? You'll just have to wait and see in the comic!

Coloring - and Eisner Stuff!

2011-04-21T23:04:00.000-04:00

Apologies for the delay in posting this one up - I try to get one up every other weekend, but this specific weekend/week combination has been especially hectic. So, without further ado!

As I mentioned a while ago, Sean Rubin and I did a story that appeared in Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard. Our story, "Potential", centered around a lone guard trying to stop a bear from attacking a small settlement near the edge of the Territories. Being able to contribute to David Petersen's incredible world was a tremendous honor in and of itself, but I was completely unprepared for the events that followed, such as signing copies of the hardcover at New York ComicCon, seeing the collection on the New York Times Best Seller List, and being able to meet and correspond with several of the other creators (all absolutely brilliant people). And now Legends of the Guard Volume 1 has been nominated for the "Best Anthology" Eisner Award! David himself picked up a nomination for his cover work on the Legends series - and those were some incredible covers!

Rachel and I are, as always, continuing work on Beyond the Western Deep as well! During this crucial phase of development, Rachel is experimenting with various color techniques to try and match the tone of the story and the concept, as well as not being too time-consuming to generate.

The images below are process pieces of various coloring experiments - neither of which are entirely representative of our "final" direction, but were important steps in trying to weed out problem areas in the various styles. Things like the emphasis on white colors in the top-left and an overall subdued emphasis on the center character have also been addressed in more recent color passes.

The coloring shown here has already been rendered mostly moot by follow-up color passes as Rachel tweaks and experiments with the palette, style, and overall detail. Hopefully by the time the next blog comes up, I'll be able to share a more finalized look at the colors of Beyond the Western Deep.

Progress Report

2011-04-04T23:05:00.000-04:00

We're cranking on the page layouts for the webcomic, trying to get a good backlog of pages in the bag before we get to the eventual online posting. These initial days of production are also fairly important in determining how often the comic will be updated when it hits. One thing Rachel and I are adamant about is making sure that when we say the comic will hit, it hits like clockwork.

Ink test for an in-progress panel (click to enlarge)

Given the nature of the comic, we're planning on dropping one completed page per update when we do finally get our backlog in the right shape and a website up and running. How long it will take between pages is still TBD based on the next couple weeks of work, but we're confident that once we get a few pages done, we'll have a good idea of what to expect down the line - as these early pages are some of the most complex in the comic and will give us a good estimate for the whole "sketch, iterate, finalize, ink, color, post" process.

In addition to the in-progress inked panel above, another concept pic from Rachel of a Felis soldier:

As you might recall from a few posts ago, the Felis armor needed some type of layering in order to make it more visually interesting. To fix this, Rachel removed the red and gold cloth sleeves and instead brought that out to the top layer as a tunic, along with adding the red shawl. The Felis soldiers don't appear in the comic until a ways into the story, but we're both pretty happy with this design.

Thumbnail Update and some Fiddling

2011-03-22T22:52:00.000-04:00

A short progress update and a bit of artwork from Rachel today:

Thumbnails are progressing on the opening pages currently - originally the introduction called for a relatively short jaunt through the Kisharian city of Gair and into a massive spire structure, where scholarly-looking Felis welcomed an unknown newcomer to their ranks and begin the work of chronicling the stories of Quinlan and Hardin.

A set of in-progress thumbnail sketches for the middle half of the introduction. Obviously these are very rough and incredibly subject to change

In the new layouts, we're trying not to rush this introduction - after all, this is the reader's very first glimpse into the world of the comic, and first impressions are everything. Because of that, we're giving this unknown character some time to walk to her destination, giving several pages of cityscape and interior architecture as she travels to her destination that will ultimately offer clues to the world and the races living within.

And here's a little bonus art!

Ever since I started working on integrating the Dakkan character into the story, I've had this belief that he played the fiddle. It always seemed a fairly obvious thing for a freewheeling devil-may-care type like Dakkan to know, and I believe that fitting his skills with the instrument into the story could potentially give more insight into his character.

Updated Race Designs: Polcan and Canid

2011-03-07T15:06:00.000-05:00

This post is a bit late, so I have to apologize about that - it's been a rather hectic two weeks, with a business trip to LA and then a holiday in Ireland. There will no doubt be a lot of work at the office for the next couple weeks as I play catch-up, so I figured I’d better put this post up before work starts anew tomorrow.

Concluding this series on the updated webcomic race designs, we’ve got the pirate-race of the Polcan and the military-obsessed Canid.

A mob of Polcan hunt down a Lutren soldier

The Polcan don’t have much of a role in the webcomic’s tale, but they do show up in crowd scenes and play a part in the introduction, which necessitates us knowing how the Polcan will look. In the prequel story we were working on, the Polcan actually played a much larger role, giving us ample opportunity to work on their background and what differentiates their society from the others in the Four Kingdoms.

After terrible drought and constant warfare, the Polcan were forced to flee their home of Rochas’Ve across the Western Seas in search of new land. History isn’t clear about what happened when the first Polcan ships ran into Lutren fishing vessels, but it is very clear that the situation did not end well.

To differentiate the Polcan from the other races of the Four Kingdoms, given their foreigner status, Rachel came up with the idea of giving them bronze armor instead of the standard iron and steel. Their color scheme became bronze and purple – though their actual clothing design is meant to be ragged and slapped together, altogether signifying their race’s fall from grace.

As in the original version of the story, the Canid play a major part in the webcomic tale. However, because Canid society only appeared in a single panel in the original first “issue” of the story, their armor designs were never really fleshed out. All we knew was that of all the races, the Canid would have the heaviest and most resilient armor.

This meant giving them large chest plates, flowing capes, and emphasizing “pieces” of armor connecting together in numerous joints. While they may not benefit from the layered clothing designs of the other races, the Canid armor still needed to look visually interesting, hence the current direction.

Another concept Rachel toyed with was the idea of giving the Canid (and a few of the other races of the kingdoms) pet birds. While the owls pictured here may not reflect the final designs, I liked the concept and think the addition of birds into the various societies open up some great opportunities, logistical, visual, and story-wise.

Updated Race Designs: Tamian and Ermehn

2011-02-21T08:50:00.002-05:00

Continuing the theme from the last production update, I thought I'd share a little bit about more the updates we're pursuing for the various races of the Four Kingdoms.

Of all the races in the comic, the Tamian have probably experienced the fewest number of changes since the original pitch went out. Instead of altering their look, we focused more on creating a cohesiveness to protagonist Quinlan's attire and trying to expand that out to other Tamian scouts. This character on the right, Miren, was meant to appear in our prequel tale as a precursor to Quinlan.

As you can see, her outfit really isn't that dissimilar to Quinlan's. The layered tunic design remains, along with the hood (which Quinlan hasn't worn up yet, but Miren does). Miren's addition to the Tamian scout uniform is the chest piece. The one here is mostly ceremonial, as a scout would not rely on it over their natural agility when it comes to defense. The chest piece would primarily be fashioned from Treewalker chitin - a symbol of that scout's first kill. Many greenhorn scouts would be shown the ropes at once, and the carapace of a giant Treewalker would be enough to fashion ceremonical chestplates for all scouts in the party.

The other race I'll show off today is the Ermehn. After losing their homeland to the Canid many years prior, the Ermehn have been relocated to the hostile Northern Wastes, forced to scavenge for food and shelter daily.

Their lifestyle and surroundings don't really allow for heavy armor or ceremonial garb, so they make do with what cloth scraps they can muster up. Instead of focusing on ornamental armor to denote their respective clans, the Ermehn rely on tattoos and paint applied to their fur, with patterns ranging from simple to complex. In most cases, the application of these marks is considered permanent. If an Ermehn is disowned by their clan, it can result in the forceful removal of these marks, which can be painful, if not deadly for the victim.

The Ermehn clothing style is similar to the one Rachel and I used in the original pitch, though the addition of heavier cloth, various wrappings, and winter cloaks all became more prominent in the recent designs. The Ermehn travel across some positively brutal terrain in the Northern Wastes, so making sure they had proper protection - even with their familiarity with cold lands - was essential this time around.

Next time I'll wrap up our tour of the comic's race updates by covering the Polcan and Canid races.

Brian Jacques - 1939-2011

2011-02-08T07:32:00.001-05:00

It's not very often when somebody creates a world so imaginative, so influential, that generations of creators call on it as their inspiration. This past weekend, the creative world lost a giant - a man who crafted a world of woodland creatures living in an Abbey in the middle of Mossflower Wood, and created a community of fans and admirers that I sincerely hope will continue to be influenced by his incredible body of work for years to come.

In a world that changes on the whims of focus groups and sales charts, here was a man who honestly did not care about any of those things. The Redwall series transcended reviews and bestseller lists. The Redwall series simply was - and every year, almost like clockwork, another book came out that you could read, each one offering a simple guarantee that for a short amount of time, you would be whisked away to the world you'd been reading of since childhood, and it would always be the same, always safe, always familiar, no matter how dark or dreary the real world became.

Despite the fact that my one personal meeting with Mr. Jacques did not go very well (it involved a Redwall video game pitch back in 2004, and interviews have since proven that this was not an idea he was very keen on), I owe him so very much. To thank him for the Redwall series itself seems insignificant - instead, I look beyond it to see that Rachel and I would probably not know each other if there was no Redwall series, and this comic tale, this world, these characters - they simply would not exist without the Redwall series as a guiding light in our early years.

My long-standing and irreplaceable friendship with Sean Rubin began with that Redwall video game pitch - and other friendships I cherish (Kristen, Vero, Zach, everyone - too many to list) began with a common interest in the Redwall series. My work on David Petersen's Mouse Guard series would not have come to pass either, without the series' incredible impression on both his work, my work, Sean's work, and our friendship. Truth be told, most of my personal creative endeavors are due to Brian Jacques and the fantasy series he created.

I don't know what the future holds for the Redwall series now - but I know that regardless of what happens with the series proper, that it will continue to evolve and improve in the hearts and minds of the creators it inspired. Redwall was more than a book series to me - it was and always will be an idea; a creative spark that, as long as we continue to hold it with us, will never die.

Updated Race Designs: Vulpin and Felis

2011-02-05T21:42:00.003-05:00

It's been almost two weeks, time for another update!

After spending some time updating the Lutren clothing and armor and making it look more cohesive with Lutren culture, Rachel and I set about defining new looks for the other major races of the Four Kingdoms. While some things are still being tweaked, I thought I'd share some of the in-progress designs Rachel and I are examining.

For the desert-dwelling Vulpin, Rachel's first order of business was to do away with the concept of a "woodland" fox as the basis for their design, instead drawing more inspiration from the kit fox and other desert-dwelling species. The newer design sports a wider face, with eyes, nose, and mouth being relatively close together in the center, and larger ears set high up on their heads.

The end result, I think, makes them look less like a caricature of the usual fox-type characters you see these days, and helps to establish them as their own race free of the usual stereotypes one normally associates with a "fox" character.

The clothing and armor for the Vulpin pulled inspiration from a number of sources, from your prototypical Saracen warrior to the Ottomans. A number of these elements came together to form the basis of the Vulpin "look".

The other race I'll show today is the Felis - the cat-like race that hails from the kingdom of Kishar on the eastern coasts. While the Felis are celebrated explorers, scientists and navigators (natural curiosity, you see), they also have a rather impressive army, and that required some imposing armor detailing.

One thing Rachel did here that I really like is emphasize the eyes - feline eyes are very striking, and creating a helmet design that isolates them from the rest of the face makes for a very unsettling look that would strike fear into any opponent.

The armor designs take some pages from Viking designs, and have hints of the Roman Centurians as well. These will be updated to include some more interesting visual layers on the torso/legs so it's not dominated by a single texture, but overall I'm quite pleased with the first stages of this armor update.

The original Felis scholars wore robes that would have seemed at home in the Roman Senate, but the plain white just wasn't very interesting - so Rachel took a stab at a new design - one that hinted at self-importance and vanity, as these scholars think quite highly of themselves. The new design uses the Felis color scheme as well.

For reference, these are the other color schemes for the races in "Beyond the Western Deep":

Each one has their own dominant colors, so even if you don't see anything but a little blob of colors, you'll know which kingdom that blob of colors belongs to.

These new race designs are quite important right off the bat, as the comic opens on a massive cityscape, showing many races milling about the Felis city of Gair. This requires core outfit design for the various races to be solidified so we can make sure their representations in the first few panels match their appearances later on in the comic as well.

In our next couple posts, we'll go into more of the updated character designs, including those for the Tamian, Ermehn, Polcan, and Canid races.

We're Back!

2011-01-24T22:09:00.001-05:00

Wow, it's been a long time since October, hasn't it? Actually, it's been a long time since any update on The Four Kingdoms - so I guess it's about time for some new news! Despite some definite interest in the comic pitch at NYCC last October, there haven't been any bites as of yet.

These past five or so months have been dedicated to a few different projects, ranging from a new one-sheet pitch of the comic to a possible webcomic prequel detailing the first days of the Four Kingdoms War.

After some helpful suggestions from fellow comic creators, Rachel and I have decided to begin producing our story as a webcomic series. Instead of being a prequel, however, we will be telling the story that was originally pitched, and the one that we've been detailing in this blog since the very first post. While things are still a little ways off before we can start posting material, we plan to keep what followers we have up to date on how the comic is coming along as we put the webcomic and its respective site together.

Again, sorry it's been so long since our last post - now that we're back to producing the comic, you can expect more frequent updates here - we'll shoot for one new update every 1-2 weeks with in-progress material to show off, and some in-depth stuff regarding all the changes we've made to the story over the last few months.

Click for Full-Size

What exactly are those changes, you might ask? Well, for starters, we've abandoned the 17 x 26 cm page size. For those not into the metric system, those dimensions hash out to the much more convoluted 6.625 x 10.25 inches - also known as the current "standard" American comic book size. Funny thing about standards is that people like to buck them!

After some experimentation, we've decided that the up-and-coming SQUARE format will be our modus operandi going forward. David Petersen has been a vocal proponent of the format he pioneered with Mouse Guard, and with good reason - square pages are easier to block out, easier to panel, and easier to read. And should one decide to print them out, you'll find they're easier to hold as well.

Other changes are more story-related. The script and story outline have both undergone considerable edits, though I am quite sure they are for the better. Even the characters themselves, as you can see from the concept art, have undergone some aesthetic changes based on further experimentation with the various races and their cultures.

To help illustrate just one of the more noticeable character design changes, Rachel put together this fantastic "before and after" piece to explain our creative process here:

Click for Full-Size

Perhaps the most obvious change thus far is the name. "The Four Kingdoms", while still adequately describing the continent that the story takes place in, will no longer be the name of this tale. While the name holds a special place in my heart, since it was the original name for long, it was never a particularly good name. There are simply too many "Kingdom" stories out there, and finding a good name for the comic became a long and arduous challenge. Finally, we settled on a name - one that calls up the forest that surrounds Quinlan's home city of Terria.

The new name of this story is to be "Beyond the Western Deep".

Rachel and I are very excited to be working on new content for this tale, and we hope you'll stick around for the ride as we commence full production on this new webcomic venture.

Pitch Away!

2010-08-07T22:12:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the long delay, folks! Truth to be told, since the pitch was completed and printed up, not a whole lot has happened on the Four Kingdoms front! After the pitch was completed, Rachel and I got the pages together and self-published a "pitch issue" to pass around to potential publishers. As we learned from the behind-the-scenes on the "Feeding Ground" pitch, having something printed up to look and feel like an actual comic is a huge advantage over a stapled bunch of 8.5x11's.

So, thanks to Comixpress, we were able to compile the pages together into our pitch issue, and it turned out perfectly! The box arrived sooner than expected, and now it's just a matter of getting it out so the right people can see it.

Chances are pretty high that we'll be hanging onto most of these suckers until New York ComicCon rolls around in October, as that will be the best opportunity to show it around to various publishers. Many a deal has been struck at NYCC, and we hope that we get that right pair of eyes on the pitch at just that right moment. As with all pitches, there is absolutely no guarantee of success, but Rachel and I are confident in the quality of The Four Kingdoms, and we hope that come October, we'll have some good news for you!

In the meantime, Rachel and I are keeping blogs outside the realm of the comic itself that focus on our individual endeavors - Rachel's blog can be found at ninjaweasels.blogspot.com, and I keep a personal blog now at alexkain.blogspot.com.

Pitch Complete!

2010-05-23T10:06:00.000-04:00

Just a few days ago, I shipped off the complete set of pages over to Comixpress to print up our "Four Kingdoms Pitch" issue. It was a pretty momentous occasion for Rachel and myself, since we'd been working on it in some capacity or another since 2008 - creating the world, iterating on the character designs, doing the whole first issue roughs, then finally assembling the various pieces of the pitch.

What you see here is the table of contents for the pitch. As I've mentioned before a couple of times, the layout of the pitch was inspired by Stephen Christy (editor in chief over at Archaia) and a commentary he did via Twitter a while back on a pitch he'd received.

The biggest concern I had was fitting the proposal onto a single page. Getting the story across in as concise a manner as possible was really important for me, as it is a rather complex story and summing it up in a line or two can be tricky. Thanks to this one-pager, though, I can take elements from it and sum things up nicely and quickly.

The pitch contains a one-page proposal, a section detailing the five main characters of the series (Quinlan, Dakkan, Kenosh, Janik, and Hardin), a summary for each of the series' proposed eight issues, a section detailing the Four Kingdoms (called "The World Before History" because the first story takes place before proper historians have begun to chronicle events beyond myth and conjecture), a series of completed sample pages from the first issue, three covers, and the entire script for the first issue.

Also, hey! That there's a map!

*ahem*

Anyway, now that the pitch itself is complete, there won't be a whole lot of new material in the way of Four Kingdoms - at least art-wise. I'm sure I'll be writing some new stuff, fleshing out the world here and there. In the interim, however, don't be surprised if I or Rachel stick updates on here related more to our other works and interests. For example, expect to see some treatises here related to game design from me, and some discourse from Rachel on art and animation. It's all part of our plan to make this blog more than a niche production news site :)

Janik and Hardin emerge!

2010-05-01T16:00:00.000-04:00

Well, we promised two more character portraits earlier, and here's a little update for them!

Janik is a close friend of Quin's... very close. Of course, what with his whole world getting flipped on its head lately, Quin isn't being particularly mindful of their relationship. While Janik understands, she is more than a little frustrated with Quin's unwillingness to take responsibility for his life. After all, that isn't difficult for her.

Hardin is the leader of a tribe of warriors and is largely responsible for disrupting the peaceful status quo in the Four Kingdoms. He sees no problem in using force to get what he wants, but then again force is really the only option he has left...

Character Portraits

2010-04-12T20:21:00.000-04:00

Of the various sections in the pitch for "The Four Kingdoms", the character profile pictures are a prominent section that helps put the entire story summary into context. Aside from the cover image itself (which I might be posting up here soon), this is the reader's first glimpse of the characters. Each portrait had to encompass that character's personality, their role in the story, pretty much everything you'd need to know about the character - just from a single picture!

I'll be posting new character portraits here with each new update, giving quick recaps on the characters and the process we went through to get the character portraits done up.

We actually started not with sketches, but with a series of written character descriptions. Rachel and I were already familiar with each character's look and personality, but the first thing we wanted to do was create a scene for each character so that the portrait felt like it was part of a larger narrative. For example:

Quinlan: He waits alone, thinking. Wondering. Mind elsewhere, his bow held fast. Half-attentive, he looks out into the forest from his perch on the high branch, searching for intruders. His mind is instead focusing on a great many other things - tomorrow, he will no longer be a scout, protecting his borders. Instead, he will be at the heart of everything - the capital city, the king's chambers, exactly where he doesn't want to be. Already he wears the uniform, but it doesn't feel right to him - like he's in another's person's skin, wearing a costume. He waits, crouched on the branch in the middle of the Western Deep, bow in hands, a quiver of arrows on his back.

With that description, and descriptions for the other major characters in the first issue, Rachel set to work on a series of sketches, some of which can be seen above. Quinlan's was meant to be a bit morose without him looking too pathetic. Dakkan's was meant to make him look carefree and contemplative. Kenosh's was meant to portray a tense scene in the Lutren senate as he convinces them to send his peace envoy to the north. The final versions of Dakkan and Kenosh are below - I'll post up the other two soon!

Deltrada Cover

2010-03-30T07:32:00.001-04:00

Just a quick update for everybody - the pitch materials are coming together excellently, with character profile pics, fully-completed pages, and some very cool mock-up issue covers to demonstrate how the comic would look sitting on a shelf in a store.

I wanted to share the progression of one of the covers with you - specifically our second issue "Deltrada" cover featuring protagonist Quinlan's battle against the blind Ermehn swordmaster, Red. While I won't go into much detail over the specifics of the scene, enough can be inferred from the cover image itself to say that in issue 2, Quinlan finally confronts the Sratha-din Ermehn threat and finds himself in his very first life-or-death fight. Because of this, we wanted the cover to capture that intensity - this isn't just some ordinary fight scene, this is the first time Quinlan's had to fight for his life, and so the cover had to capture the menace and raw power of his foe.

To start, Rachel sketched out a series of thumbnail images so we could see which scene layout we liked the most. There were four initial concepts (shown above), each one showing a different angle/tone/etc. The first sketch got Red's size and strength across well enough, but it felt a bit too crowded and the title text up top would have obscured about 99% of Red's sword. The second sketch, showing Quin from the front with Red swinging away from the camera, just felt awkward. Having Quinlan as the center of attention also put him on a higher footing than his foe - the idea behind the cover was to downplay Quin and make him seem less powerful than Red, and showing our protagonist so prominently elevated him a bit too much. The third sketch featured a similar problem - it elevated Quin a little too much, making him seem as powerful if not moreso than Red. The angle is also a little too straight-on, so we nixed that one.

The very last sketch ended up being the one we went with - it put Red front and center, sword in the air, bearing down on an evasive-looking Quin, who is shrinking back defensively. Rachel took the thumbnail and cleaned it up a little bit, sending it over in the form of the sketch to the right.

From here, Rachel was able to take the sketch and expand on it. In the script for this scene, the two characters are fighting in the pouring rain, so a lot of time was spent on Rachel's part looking into how water acts on various surfaces. There was also quite a bit of effort spent on his sword - bloodied from a previous encounter - and how said blood would be affected by the downpour.

With these directives in mind, Rachel went about creating the first pass at the cover using the appropriate page dimensions and flat colors - no rain or special effects, yet.

In general, we were both pleased with the layout of the characters, the angle of the shot, etc. Rachel also had to remind me that Red's elaborate tattoos, which give his character a lot more visual dimension, had not been added yet - so I was okay with the general absence of detail on Red's body and clothing.

A few things needed tweaking at this point, however - Quinlan's demeanor and pose being the big ones.

In the original sketch, he seemed a lot more animated, like he was actively trying to avoid the inevitable sword swing. In this first pass, he seemed a bit surprised, like he'd let his guard down a moment before. This, along with the various minor tweaks and environmental/special effect additions would be reflected in the next few passes.

In the next pass, Quinlan was altered to look more like he did in the original sketch, and the special effects were added, along with Red's tattoos. The title text was also added! The final pass is below. Enjoy!

An Update! Also, Sunsgrove Architecture

2010-03-07T18:16:00.001-05:00

Wow, three months between blog posts! Clearly this is what I meant when I said we'd be posting more stuff! We're hard at work putting together all the content for the pitch - from fully-completed pages to character portraits and beyond. Stephen Christy, Director of Development at Archaia Studios Press, put together a spectacular commentary on a pitch that was presented to him for the upcoming series "Feeding Ground". Essentially, this was a step-by-step look at a successful comic pitch, and it's been a superb resource throughout our pitch creation process. You can view the images (with Stephen's commentary) right over here.

Currently, we're working on getting the "Characters" section of the pitch completed. I'll show some of the artwork for that as it comes through, but I wanted to share some of the material Rachel's put together for the recently-completed pages that are going into the pitch. Specifically related to the Sunsgrovian architecture style we ended up using for the pages.

To start with, the scene in question is a playful sparring match between protagonist Quinlan and an egotistical Tesque trainer named Crim. In the background, we can see the Tamian dwellings surrounding the training area where the match is taking place. The problem was that we didn't really know what the dwellings should look like. All I'd really given Rachel was that the Tamian have a tree-based city, and that I didn't want it to look like a copy of the Ewok Village from Return of the Jedi, Tree-Top Town from Donkey Kong Country, the Elvish cities from Lord of the Rings, or Sprucetuck from Mouse Guard. In other words, I'd told her what it wasn't - but not what it WAS.

So we worked out the following four rules for the Tamian architecture:

1.) Inverse class/height tropes. What does this mean? In most fantasty tales (and in real life), the rich people live high up, while the poor people live on the ground level. In Sunsgrove, where the entire race is vertically inclined, the tops of the trees offer more living space for the unwashed masses. Countless communal hammocks line the treetops, offering even the poorest Tamian a place to sleep.

With Sunsgrove's relatively recent diplomatic focus with the land-bound Lutren, Canid, Vulpin and Felis, the upper-class Tamian began building ground-level accommodations. Diplomats and royalty began to grow accustomed to living on the ground, and the ground-level living quarters became the most valuable properties to own.

2.) Open, open, open. The middle and lower-class Tamian (ie the majority) live in the treetops. They've been leaping between trees for countless generations, so I wanted their architectural style to take that into account - it would need to be open and spacious, with lots of open archways and no doors whatsoever. Heavy curtains would keep the cold, rain, and snow out, and at the same time afford a wide open view to the majesty of the Western Deep - the forest that surrounds the Tamian capital city.

This resulted in a lot of research into various forms of "open" architecture. Archways, latticework, all sorts of things. Rachel pulled a variety of inspirations from all over the world as she pieced together the look of the Tamian city.

3.) Preserve the trees. Since the trees of the capital city are revered as sacred relics, hollowing them all out willy-nilly would feel strange. Because of this, most homes that are built up the tree trunks only partly go into the tree. Homes on the trees are generally small, as Tamian don't spend much time within them, so there wouldn't be much need to hollow out the trees that much anyway.

4.) Avoid uniform angles. This is a similar rule to one that I'd heard from the making of features in Lord of the Rings - the Elvish architecture didn't use many, if any, straight lines. Everything was naturally curved to emphasize the Elves' harmony with nature (which also doesn't feature straight lines).

While I wanted to avoid comparisons to Elvish cities like Rivendell or Lothlorien, it's a good general rule when trying to make a city that looks "natural". These rules coalesced into a pretty cohesive style for the Tamian city, focusing on circular ramps, wide arches, and generally a "vertical" feel.

That's all for now, but as the character portraits and other pitch assets come together, I'll try to get some stuff on here.

Making the Page

2009-12-08T21:35:00.001-05:00

Hey everybody, Alex here! Sorry about the huge downtown between posts - there's been a lot going on in the interim, so there's quite a bit to report!

First and foremost, Rachel has graduated from BYU and is balancing her Four Kingdoms work with a veritable mountain of other projects on her plate. Aside from that, I've also been keeping busy on a variety of new projects, from work-related game projects to a spectacular comic-writing opportunity with my good friend, Sean Rubin.

Have no fear, though! Progress continues on the comic, and our plan to have a solid pitch together for the next New York ComicCon is still perfectly on-track.

I figured that since it's been a few months since we really offered up a post, I'd treat you to something pretty in-depth and behind the scenes: a page's progress, from start to finish!

This is the first draft that Rachel did oh-so-long ago. This was obviously before any serious script edits, back when the comic script was basically ripped verbatim from the source material - which was, in fact, a novel. You don't need to be Scott McCloud to know that comics don't really support the exposition you can fit into a novel, so I had to really dive into other comics to see how they handled loads of exposition.

Long story short, they don't. At least, they don't in such a short period of time. I realized that I'd need to take a hacksaw to my script - not just here, but EVERYWHERE. I really took a good look at other comics in the genre, from Mice Templar to Mouse Guard, the latter really helping me figure out how to reduce word count using on-screen actions and expressions instead of nouns and verbs.

This panel also demonstrates some of the issues we had early on with paneling. The comic was originally laid out like a movie storyboard, with a lot of medium shots for expository sections like this. As Rachel eventually came to learn, comics have their own panel-to-panel language, and that would require a good deal of re-paneling.

This page on the left is a few revisions later. You'll see a few new things right off the bat. First, the script isn't as long. It's still long, but it's not quite as clunky and page-filling as it was in the original version.

Perhaps the biggest change here is in how the panels are laid out. Whereas the first draft consisted almost entirely of mid-range shots, this new version dares to go for the dramatic close-up, and also cuts away briefly to show the Juskadin in the third panel.

In general, this new layout represents the new direction we took after the initial draft, which was twofold: less text, and more diverse panel layouts. Close-ups, cutaways, dramatic angles - nothing is off-limits! If it makes the scene more interesting, we're all about trying it.

Finally, we have the completed page on the right. I did leave out a few steps before, like the completed inks and lighting studies that Rachel did, but we must maintain SOME level of mystery, yes?

It still amazes me just how much nicer things look in color! Sure, there are some excellent black & white comics out there (Bone popping into my head almost instantly), but I just love the palette that Rachel went with here - it really represents the heart of Four Kingdoms, which is a combination of dark fantasy themes and homages to classical animated films.

The Lutren army uniform, with the wave motif, just pops right out of the page when it's in color. Also, the third panel, with its silhouetted malice, really turned out well.

The re-panels and page colorings continue, along with a variety of other pitch materials, such as character portraits, maps, covers, all that good stuff. As things move along, rest assured we'll stick it here for you to see!

Coloring progress!

2009-09-24T21:15:00.000-04:00

Hey, Rachel here!

It's been a long time since this blog has been updated! Mainly that's because of my time being strained with school, along with a huge overhaul on the art for this project.

One of the most difficult (and fun!) part of drawing a comic is when it comes to the coloring stage. Here is where a lot of the mood of your comic gets established - is it cartoony? Realistic? Sad? Intense? Dramatic? Silly and lighthearted?

We'd tried a coloring pass on one of our finished pages earlier this year, with these results:

At the time, I thought it was looking pretty sweet. Overwhelmingly Crayola Green color scheme for the forest, soft shading, an attempt at lighting... of course right now I can't find much good to say about it! It's very flat and boring, and one of the professionals we went to for feedback told me so (a shout-out to David Petersen: thanks a ton!).

I went on with drawing and fixing pages, and in my personal work, looked for opportunities to practice my digital coloring. Getting good color schemes, making believable lighting, improving my painting style - the sort of things that were lacking.

Here is the new and improved color pass:

I managed to find a way to make light more luminous, and in general got a better grasp on how to work with color. In half a year I don't know where I'll be or how much further I will have improved, but this felt like a big step forward. And the best part is it'll make this comic that much easier on the eyes for all y'all! :)

Dakkan's Journey

2009-04-30T15:00:00.000-04:00

I must again apologize for these large gaps between blog posts – I can assure you that it’s not because we’re lazy! Quite the contrary, it’s our genuine lack of lazy that’s kept us from updating regularly. I’ll try to keep things coming at a regular pace from here on out.

To make up for the long gap between posts, I’ve got a special treat for you all, courtesy of Rachel herself! Not just any ‘ol artwork, but a full-fledged storyboard of a Four Kingdoms-inspired event that occurred in Dakkan’s early career in the Lutren Military.

This storyboard project was actually for one of Rachel’s many art-related college courses, so some liberties were taken with the world of the Four Kingdoms for the sake of the storyline. For example, badgers and raccoons were added in because their natural ‘masks’ made them great highway robbers, even though they're not featured in the actual world of the Four Kingdoms. So while this can’t be considered 100% canon as-is, a rough approximation of these events definitely did occur in some capacity in Dakkan’s past.

In the original Four Kingdoms script, Dakkan was not quite the same character he is now. I had written in a kind of free-wheeling goof to play off of Quinlan’s cynical world view, but he was proving to be generally devoid of character; a standard comical sidekick with no real depth to him. But when Rachel’s long-time character, Dakkan, was introduced as Quinlan’s best friend in a later draft revision, the friendship came to life. It became more than a hero/sidekick relationship – these two characters had become friends through painful life experiences: no proper father figures, a debilitating fear of taking another’s life, and a deeply-rooted sense of loyalty to their respective kingdoms, among other things.

This origin-type story chronicles Dakkan’s very first mission as a Lutren soldier, guiding a pair of merchants through a dangerous part of the forest. When they are confronted by highway robbers, Dakkan’s quick temper takes hold and he finds himself quickly in a fight for his life! What happens next changes him forever. Let’s just say that there’s a good reason you won’t see Dakkan hefting a sword in the comic anytime soon.

The full video can be found by following the link below. The Quicktime movie features one individual storyboard panel per frame, so simply click the link or download it, then use your Left/Right arrow keys on your keyboard to scroll forward and backwards through the story. Also, I should mention that these boards, like the Four Kingdoms comic itself, are rated PG-13, T for Teen, etc. That said, enjoy!

DAKKAN STORYBOARD PROJECT

2009-03-18T22:46:00.000-04:00

Hi everybody! Sorry about the delay - I meant to put up something about New York ComicCon on here, but ended up writing the last blogpost instead. In a nutshell, NYCC went incredibly well, we got a lot of good feedback about Four Kingdoms. An extra-special thanks goes out to Dave Petersen for his critique of the first issue roughs; when we do get the page revisions completed and everything is pretty and colored, it'll look much better than it would have had he not given it that once-over. Hopefully we'll be able to show some "before and after" panels sometime soon to go over the improvements being made to the layout.

Of course, that brings me to the next part of this post - "soon" is, of course, a relative thing. While I can imagine how full-time comic artists and writers are able to focus entirely on their craft, it's only because I have a good imagination; Rachel and I do have priorities with our full-time jobs (student and game designer, respectively), but don't worry - work always continues on Four Kingdoms, no matter what happens!

I'll wrap up this post with a fantastic piece of guest art by Alchera. Hardin never looked so menacing!

The next couple of weeks will be busy busy busy on my end, as the Game Developer's Conference is coming up and, like some kind of geeky salmon returning to its point of origin, I am compelled to return to said GDC as often as possible. Maybe if you're all really good, Rachel will come on here and bestow upon you a gift of some kind? We'll see!

Writing with Pictures

2009-02-14T15:00:00.000-05:00

Game designers make better comic writers than novelists for a few reasons - first, aside from maybe Hideo Kojima and the Metal Gear Solid series, game designers must condense their output to fit into set constraints. If I work on a mobile phone game, I've only a few kilobytes-worth of text I can squeeze in, and then there's that tiny screen! Instead of saying "When you pick up the basketball, run towards the basket", one must instead say "Pick up ball, run to basket".

Conversely, when you write a novel, your first instinct is to describe in detail. You set the scene with words, and you have to cater to your entire audience on the first try – as Jef Mallett said, “Being a good writer means never having to say ‘I guess you had to be there’.” This is doubly important with fantasy stories because you – the writer – are the only person who’s ever been to the place you’re describing. With a comic, words take a backseat. Description is no longer imperative, as the artist can show exactly what it is you mean to say.

In this respect, writing a comic script is a bit like writing text for a game. Both comics and games rely on visuals to tell the story, with text acting as a supplement. Crack open any good comic and you’ll see the art is telling the story most of the time – not the text. Because of this, finding the right balance between what you want the characters to say and what you want the characters’ actions to say is a blurry line that I’m still figuring out. As I’ve learned over the last few drafts of the script, when you write a comic, the artist is as much a writer as the writer is. If you believe a picture is worth a thousand words, then that makes the artist even more a writer than the actual writer!

My first draft of the Four Kingdoms script was very much still the novel I had begun to write beforehand. It wasn’t until Rachel laid out the initial thumbnails of the Felis prologue and some of the other scenes that I realized I needed to apply my game designer shtick to the comic’s script. Let’s take a look at the evolution of some scripty bits:

The Lost "Felis Prologue":

In the original prologue, a group of shadowy hooded figures argue around a table in a dusty old library. After some back and forth, a few plot details began to emerge – they were recording some important historical event, a stranger was among them who had been a participant, and the facts surrounding this event were impossible to determine. The scene would have gone on for about two and a half pages, most of it just people sitting around a table arguing.

A snippet of this lost scene:

Shadow 1: This is not another one of your abridged travesties! This is the most important thing that any of us in this room will ever write! There hasn’t been an event like this since the Four Kingdoms War, and that was a lifetime ago!

Shadow 2 (to the others): Brother Camriel is speaking in exaggerations.

Shadow 1: I speak the truth! Our writing of these events will affect our relations with all the races of the Four Kingdoms. This is not some skirmish between Vulpin tribes or Polcan pirates! We write of a world war, and we cannot take that responsibility lightly!

Words and words and words! For a comic, especially a comic that introduces a brand new fantasy world, showing a bunch of shadowy cloaked characters in a library probably isn’t the best way to garner interest. Thankfully we came to our senses and condensed the Scholars sequence into a single page and added some nice visual splendor to pique interest.

My second and last example (since I’m starting to belie my point about being succinct with this post) is a series of panels from Quinlan’s introduction:

Original text:

Quinlan: When my grandfather told me that I needed to join the Tamian Military, he gave me a choice of paths to follow. I chose to be a scout so I wouldn’t have to kill anyone. He was against it, of course. It was the first time we ever really fought.

Janik (surprised): Yeah, but… you’re so good at Tesque…

(Quin collects his supplies and stands up, offering Janik a paw)

Quinlan: Knowing how to fight is a philosophy. The true act of fighting, though, that’s… something quite different. Honestly, I don’t know whether to thank my grandfather or hate him.

Janik: Why’s that?

Quinlan: Well… it’s hard to explain. To him, the best way a warrior’s life could be spent was by constant fighting, risking life and limb. Whenever he tried to explain it to me, I just got… scared. Eventually he stopped trying to explain, and he let me become a scout. I think he considered that his greatest failure.

Janik: And you think that’s why he willed you to become captain after he died?

Quinlan: How could I turn down his dying wish? He got what he wanted, that’s all he cares about, I’m sure.

Janik: Well, he lived in a violent time. Things are more civilized now.

Quinlan (as he and Janik walk away): That’s just what worries me, Janik… I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that’s true at all.

And now the scene as it appears in a more current draft:

So, getting back to my original point – if you’re a novelist at heart, comic writing will take quite a bit of practice to get right. If you’re a game designer, especially a game designer that constantly has to work within tight size constraints – you might actually want to give comic writing a whirl. Half of the fun of game design comes from working within constraints - so the constraints of comic writing should very much appeal to you.

The Kingdoms of "Kingdoms": Deltrada

2009-01-26T15:00:00.000-05:00

To describe the northern kingdom of Deltrada is to describe the whole of the militaristic Canid race – cold, brutal, and always willing to turn a petty fight into a lifestyle choice.

Calling the Canid ‘petty’ is hardly fair, however, considering that not long ago, they were nearly wiped off the map entirely. The Canid once lived in the barren Northern Wastes, struggling to survive off of the inhospitable terrain. When the Four Kingdoms War broke out and all the seven races in the land were at each other’s throats, the Canid had to make a choice: attack one of the races to the south and take their land, or put their entire race’s future at the mercy of the unforgiving northern winters. They steeled themselves for battle and attacked their nearest neighbor – the Ermehn.

Things went poorly for the Canid at first. They lost almost every skirmish against their more experienced and battle-hardened foes, and they were at risk of losing their entire campaign unless they did something drastic. On the eve of the final battle, the Canid managed to convince the neighboring Tamian and Lutren races that the Ermehn race was a threat to them. This alliance tripled the strength of the Canid army, and the Ermehn were soundly defeated.

The Canid named their new kingdom “Deltrada”. They quickly built a capital city, several military garrisons, and a massive wooden wall blocking off all major paths leading into the Northern Wastes – believing that the Ermehn would attack them the first chance they could.

Deltrada is currently under the protection of the Canid leader, Lord Odrahn, and his three generals: Clovis, Tyril, and Galleon. In the 85 harvests that have passed since the end of the Four Kingdoms War, the Canid have become a military superpower – their entire society is now based on keeping the Ermehn locked away in the Northlands, firm in the belief that the Ermehn are simply biding their time for one last massive battle to retake their land.

The Kingdoms of "Kingdoms": Sunsgrove

2009-01-06T15:00:00.000-05:00

Progress report: Things are moving! We’re hoping to have the first issue’s final script and panel roughs all laid out and ready to go by New York ComicCon next month. At the very least, this will be a busy month in Four Kingdoms-land!

For the next few blogposts, I figured I would go into some detail about the landscape and history of the Four Kingdoms, going into each of the titular kingdoms and their inhabitant races. This post is dedicated to our main protagonists’ home: Sunsgrove.

Sunsgrove is quite the anomaly when it comes to the Four Kingdoms – the other three kingdoms are ruled by dominant races, while Sunsgrove is split in two: Lutren territory and Tamian territory.

Lutren territory lies to the south, snaking its way north along the western coastline. Tamian territory, further inland, makes up the rest of the kingdom. Think of it like this – the Lutren live on the coasts, the Tamian live in the massive forests of the Western Deep. And that’s Sunsgrove!

During the Four Kingdoms War, when racial alliances were forged to battle against invading species, the Tamian and the Lutren banded together to overcome the Polcan race, which was threatening to push them both into the desert-like midlands (now home to the Vulpin and the kingdom of Nessa). With the Tamian’s knowledge of the Western Deep and the Lutren’s seafaring skills, the two races were able to push the Polcan from the coasts and into the Great Sea, where they now live as pirates and bandits.

To this day, the Tamian and Lutren share the land peacefully, with a Lutren queen and a Tamian king representing the continued alliance between the two races. Our hero, Quinlan, serves directly under the Tamian king, Dabheid - so expect to see a bit of this pudgy monarch. Dakkan and Kenosh serve under the Lutren queen, Sorcha - who's a bit of a hard-liner. Dakkan really doesn't like her that much - and rest assured, the feeling is mutual. As the political situation in Sunsgrove deteriorates, expect to see these royal monarchs doing what they do best!

Modern Influences

2008-12-19T15:00:00.000-05:00

When I started brainstorming the characters for “Four Kingdoms”, I actually made a point to start in a place very different from where the ‘writer’ part of me wanted to start. When you write a story of any kind, your characters are usually created from archetypes that then become more complex and definitive. To use a cooking example, normally when one creates a character, they pick a main ingredient, and then add other ingredients to accent its flavor. This is usually done over the course of the storyline, and by the end, you’ve got a tasty cake. Or a well-developed character.

In “Four Kingdoms”, I approached things differently. While a lot of our inspiration comes from stories like “Redwall” and “Mouse Guard”, where characters are defined by personality archetypes (the quiet tactician, the brash warrior, the doting Abbeymum, etc), I started as I would start with a video game design: purpose archetypes, not personality. I got the idea from the Xbox 360 title “Lost Odyssey” – for those in the know, it’s very much designed like a classic Japanese role-playing game like Final Fantasy, with lots of story sequences and complex turn-based battles that involve a combination of magical and physical attacks. The characters and their respective roles, however, seemed to have been assembled from a design perspective.

For example, an early party makeup consists of two warriors and a mage. Gameplay dictates that you protect the mage in battle because his spells can turn the tides, and to reinforce this notion, you learn in the storyline cutscenes that the mage character is actually quite a coward – his purpose in the game and his purpose in the storyline are one.

So I approached the main characters of “Four Kingdoms” as if I were designing a game. What would a “balanced” party be? Quinlan is ideal for long-range and very close-range attacks with his bow and tesque skills, making him the ideal ‘scout’ class, while Dakkan’s wooden staff and his strong build make him a good ‘warrior monk’ class, or even a ‘brawler’. Kenosh, being the strong-willed warrior that he is, is an ideal ‘knight’ or ‘paladin’. Later characters will fall into the ‘assassin’, ‘mage’, and ‘barbarian’ classes, and some characters may even switch classes as their personalities evolve.

So what does all this geeky chicanery mean for “Four Kingdoms”? Well, in the end, all it really means for you, the readers, is that the characters will have their own unique and easily identifiable roles to play when they’re in danger. I’m hoping that this more modern interpretation of the character archetype perhaps helps readers identify with the characters quicker – it’s all very much an experiment in narrative design. But then again, I design video games for a living, so if I didn’t approach it from this kind of perspective, I’d feel like I was doing something wrong!

Stay tuned to this blog for more updates about the comic as it progresses – and maybe even another update from Rachel!

The Fated Players

2008-12-05T15:00:00.000-05:00

During the initial brainstorming stage for Four Kingdoms, the first thing I wrote down was the following: “It’s a medieval-style world, it’s dirty and grimy. There was a war a long time ago that splintered the races around the landmass, which did not have a name at first, but is now known as the Four Kingdoms.” I spent the next many long days mapping out the world, the races, and the little quirks that would make them interesting to learn about.

Once the world and its races were established (a process that could and probably will take up an entire future blog post), the important thing was then to create a story that showed them all off!

In other stories where the world was created before the characters, the story is usually focused on shuttling the characters from place to place so as to fit in as many cool environs as possible. Lord of the Rings, for example, wasn’t a deep character study so much as it was a simple story taking place in a very complex world. Mouse Guard’s first collection feels a lot like this, though the “Winter” events seem to hint at a greater focus on the characters and less on the world at large. Four Kingdoms was written to skirt the line between introducing a new world and focusing on its characters and their plight, and to ensure that both received the appropriate amount of attention.

Quinlan is the protagonist of Four Kingdoms, and he is the reader’s vessel to the world of ‘good’ in the story. As evil creeps across the land, he is the one we follow. By the time the story begins, he has just been inducted as the Captain of the Tamian Royal Guard, has a war hero grandfather to live up to, has relationship problems with his girlfriend, Janik, and overall feels that the world’s coming down around his ears. If it weren’t for his best friend, Dakkan, he’d probably lose his mind.

Dakkan is a soldier in the Lutren Sea Guard – the carefree and rambunctious counterpart to Quinlan’s occasional over-dramatization. Despite being in the Sea Guard, Dakkan actually spends most of his time on land, ensuring that the catapults used to protect the Sunsgrovian coasts are in peak condition. He and Quinlan befriended one another at an early age, both of them understanding the difficulties of living under battle-hardened veterans. Dakkan’s father, Kenosh, is the Captain of the Lutren Sea Guard. It is Kenosh who learns of impending dangers to Sunsgrove, and it is Kenosh who suggests that Quinlan join him on a peacekeeping mission to Canid territory at the story’s onset.

Hardin is the reader’s vessel to the world of ‘evil’ in the story, though I use the term loosely, since ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are very much a matter of perspective in Four Kingdoms. Hardin leads a tribe of Ermehn barbarians called the Sratha-din across the frozen tundra of the Northlands in hopes of a better life, though many have long since given up hope. Driven by desperation, Hardin and his fellow warriors turn south to the Four Kingdoms, hoping that somehow they will be able to right the wrongs of the past and secure a future for their kind.

Hopefully in a week or few, I'll be able to talk a bit about the various inspirations for Four Kingdoms, from the aforementioned fantasy stories to the Xbox 360 title "Lost Odyssey"!

Tesque (and a Status Update)!

2008-11-10T15:00:00.000-05:00

The first issue of Four Kingdoms is getting closer to completion! Rachel’s finished up most of the page roughs, with inking and coloring marking the next steps in the process. One guaranteed rule of the universe is that when you’re in college, you will have at least ten years’-worth of assignments to do in the two months before winter break. I remember it like it was yesterday, and Rachel’s living through it right now, so between my nightmares about finals week before winter break and Rachel’s inability to find enough time to sleep in order to have nightmares about finals week before winter break, the next couple of weeks will probably be a bit slow on the production front. Because of this, I figured I would treat you to a new post that goes over a unique part of Tamian society – TESQUE!

One thing that I’ve learned from many years of history courses is that every group of humans, from every time period, has their own unique form of combat. It truly is an art form that transcends time and place – from kung fu to bare-knuckle boxing to fencing to pistol duels – combat may not define a group, but it does reveal a lot about them. When I was brainstorming the various races of the Four Kingdoms, I realized that a group of squirrels would not simply stand around and punch each other in the face, and a group of wolves would not be hopping around the floor like Bruce Lee; each race would need to have its own combat style that takes a bit from our reality, and mixes it with the unique advantages of their kind. Tesque was the first of these combat styles that I came up with – a kind of combination of Tony Jaa’s Muay Thai style and a squirrel’s natural acrobatic ability.

Tesque was created long before the Four Kingdoms War, long before the comic’s story begins – back when the Tamian was a group of scattered tribes living in the trees. Their entire lifestyle depended on their ability to maintain a height advantage over their foes, and so when two Tamian warriors battled one another, they did it high in the treetops, using their natural acrobatic skills and razor-sharp claws to flip and jump between tree limbs while delivering attacks to their opponent. The loser of the battle either lost their footing or was knocked off of their tree limb – but either way, it was always a long way down.

As time went on, the Tamian began to encounter the other races of the land, many of them land-bound, which required them to adapt their multi-leveled fighting style to the ground. Many rare and unique maneuvers were lost in this transition, but the basic three tenets of the fighting style remained: Always keep moving, Know the ground and feel the air, Everything is a weapon.

These three tenets form the core of basic Tesque, emphasizing speed over power, an understanding of your environment, and the ability to use every body part during battle to maintain the advantage. The oft-used Trainer mantra is, “From your teeth to your tail!” These three tenets are still taught in Sunsgrove to this day.

Every Tamian in Sunsgrove is trained in Tesque from a very young age, it being considered one of the most defining aspects of their racial heritage.

Quinlan, the protagonist of Four Kingdoms, is a Tesque Master – the highest level that can be bestowed upon a Tamian. There are four levels to the understanding of Tesque:
The Student is the lowest level, where they become familiar with the basic moves and the three tenets.
Acolytes form the second level, which involves learning some of the more complicated acrobatics and movements, and is usually where trainees experience their first major accidental injury.
Trainers make up the third level of Tesque, and these Tamian warriors are used to train the Students in the basics of Tesque.
Masters are the fourth and final level – these Tamian having perfected all of the most complex Tesque moves. Masters train Acolytes and Trainers alike, grooming them to become Masters themselves. The path from Student to Master typically takes around 10 harvests – or years, to us.

In the first issue of Four Kingdoms, you’ll be treated to a short spar between a Tesque Master and a Tesque Trainer. This, however, is only a first glimpse at the complex Tamian fighting style. As it is a deep-rooted tradition in Tamian culture, you can expect it to come up in many different ways over the course of Quinlan’s adventures!

Animal Characters: Striking a balance.

2008-10-22T23:00:00.000-04:00

Hiya, Rachel here. I'm the artist for Four Kingdoms, doing my best to bring Alex's story and characters to life.

I've always adored animal characters in stories and film, ever since I was little. Even today, I still find animal characters to be (almost invariably) more interesting than human ones. But why should that be, if I'm human myself and respond to humans more than animals in real life? The thing is, these characters are essentially human, for the most part – they have human personalities and character traits, and some even walk on two feet, talk, and wear clothing. We can identify with them just fine, even though they're animals on the surface.

I also think that there's a certain freedom to working with animal characters – since they're not 100% realistic humans, you're already expecting the audience to suspend a little disbelief to accept and empathize with the characters as they are. Suddenly if your character needs to accomplish a deed outside the capabilities of a regular person, he can do it because he's not a regular person anyway – he's a cougar or wolf or mouse or whatever. This especially helps when the character's animal traits work with their accomplishment (such as, a squirrel character climbing all the way to the top of an monster oak in minutes – which no human could believably do).

These animal traits can also enhance the experience, especially when it comes to animal gestures that we as humans still understand. When Ren the Fox feels sad, his ears may droop. That would be a ridiculous thing to happen to a sad human, but it is a foxlike gesture we can take advantage of... especially in a comic like Four Kingdoms where we experience the story visually. Animal gestures (like all the hairs on a tail standing on end, or a whisker twitch) can add a new level of expression to the human body language the character is already exhibiting, and makes it even easier to avoid stupid, lazy “telling not showing” dialog such as “Sob! I'm so sad!”

So for me, it all boils down to the human/animal mix that's so intriguing about these creatures. Animal-humans act like us, but are not restricted to purely human mannerisms. This principle also drives the way I've handled the character designs for this story.

One of the things that drives me crazy about a lot of the “furry” characters I've seen around the internet is that there is often way too much “human” thrown in the mix. Say we're looking at a fella known as “Simon the Wolf” ...who is basically a wolf head on a fuzzy human body with a tail. Or even worse, maybe Simon's head is actually humanoid with a small black nose and wolf ears. It's only slightly nonhuman, so it looks really weird and creepy to me – like the “Uncanny Valley” concept that deals with only-slightly-off humanoid robots. If it's 99% human, that other 1% creeps us out because it looks wrong. The less human it looks, the less we expect it to look and act like a perfect human... making it easier for us to accept it for what it is. Making sure there's a healthy dose of “animal” in there also makes the use of animal-specific talents a lot more feasible. If a bird-man just has a beak and no real wings, can we really accept it if he suddenly flies off into the sunset?

So for the Four Kingdoms characters, it was very important to me that they still read as a definite animal, rather than as a weird human with fur. The otters have long bodies and shorter limbs, while the wolves have more shoulder and neck mass than the others. The tails are not just cute little animal “souvenirs” pasted on so much as a definite part of the characters and their overall gestures. All the races' legs are a pretty even blend of human and animal – they walk on their heels, but the leg bones and muscles have a more animal look than human. There's also the matter of female anatomy – due to the high percentage of "animal" I want to retain in the characters, this can make specifying gender a little tough. While the surface anatomy can be treated in a more human way and still not be creepy, I prefer to let the facial features and general body shape do the feminizing. Clothing can help too, of course.

The end result of all this is a cast of characters I can do a whole lot with when it comes to expression and acting. A wolf guard can do much more than curl his lip and lean forward to be intimidating – he can bare his razor-sharp fangs, hunch over his victim, neck-fur bristling, and speak in a literal growl. An annoyed feline scholar can let one of his ears tilt back, unaware that he has lost the illusion of calm stoicism. An ermine's already long and limber body can be forced into an even more exaggerated cringe under the angry Wolf's eye, or be exploited for more impressive-looking acrobatics than a human could manage.

I say, if you're going to make the leap and make the characters non-human: use it! Keep them identifiable with the audience, but take full advantage of their non-human qualities. And that's what we're striving for with our characters in this comic.

The Scholars

2008-09-14T22:09:00.000-04:00

This shadowy group is the only reason you’re even reading this story! The page draft to the right is actually from an older introductory sequence that focused more heavily on this group of clandestine recorders. It was to be done entirely in the shadows, with no faces visible and only outlines to suggest characters. Rachel did a really neat wallpaper image of her initial style test, which I'll toss at the end of this post for anyone interested.

The idea for this kind of heavily stylized "in media res" intro came from the Thief series of PC games, which often featured cutscenes of shadowed characters identifiable only by their outline and voice. It was a style we wanted to emulate, and will hopefully get to indulge in during certain sections of the comic.

As for the Scholars themselves, their influence remains in the tale, as they will be the ones actually keeping track of the events from issue to issue. Who are they, you ask? To answer that, we'll have to travel back in time a bit.

Long ago, before the Four Kingdoms were created at the end of a great and terrible war, there was not any form of ‘history’ aside from the occasional oral folktale, and these were twisted and skewed over many generations. So twisted and skewed have these stories become that they now hide the original facts, blending them completely with fantastical elements inserted only to keep the audience’s attention on the storyteller.
Because of this, a battle of a hundred became a war of a hundred thousand. A party of fifty heroes became a single warrior, capable of striking down armies where they stood. A political matter between two tribes became a quest for a lost love, spanning across land and sea. While these embellishments made for great tales around the fire, they did nothing to teach future generations of their ancestors’ struggles. Because of this, ancient strife was never quelled, and war became inevitable.

After the massive Four Kingdoms War, the Felis – now settling into their new homeland of Gair – decided that they would dedicate themselves to the recording of true history. They would form an elite group of scribes and researchers who were impartial to an extreme, writing history as mere vessels of the truth, devoid of personal interpretation. They travel all over the land, never seen, never heard, but they watch, and they listen. When their work is done, they return to the spire of Gair and begin to write.

To avoid external pressure, the Scholars are known to isolate themselves for weeks at a time as they chronicle a major event. Nobody is ever allowed in or out of their massive spire academy at the heart of Gair during this period of time, but at the start of this tale, one lone figure approaches the spire academy...

For the first time since its inception, the Scholars are calling on an outsider to assist them. The story they aim to record is, as they say, a “great event” – a title given to world-changers and wars. The only other “great event” to be recorded by the Scholars was the Four Kingdoms War – the very first historical tome ever written.

This outsider tells the Scholars of a captain from the western kingdom of Sunsgrove – Quinlan – a member of the Tamian race. This young warrior will travel the known world in his quest, finding friends and enemies along the way, all in the name of preventing a second massive war from destroying the Four Kingdoms. It is his story that we follow, from simple beginnings… to the bitter end.

Keep your eye on this blog as we dive into the world and characters of The Four Kingdoms, as well as the many sources and motivations of the material.

For now, signing off!

-AK

Introductions!

2008-09-02T19:02:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the Four Kingdoms Production Blog! Here we will be posting periodic updates about the creation and development of our comic, The Four Kingdoms. If you keep an eye on this blog, you’ll bear witness to page drafts, character bios, history lessons (the fun “300” kind, not the boring “beelyuns and beelyuns of stars…” kind), and a lot of personal musings from both Rachel and myself about the comic overall.

I say that last part as if I expect you all to know who we are. I suppose introductions are in order!

My name is Alex. By day, I’m a video game designer working on titles that you may or may not have heard of, depending on your tastes and platforms of choice. By night, I write! The Four Kingdoms actually began its life as a novel I started in response to my once-love for the venerable “Redwall” series by Brian Jacques. It was a series I adored as a kid, but sadly it did not grow up with me. Poking my nose into recent iterations of the series, I felt like former readers from the early years might be looking for something that delves a bit deeper, asks greater questions, and thrills on a more visceral level. I’ve written The Four Kingdoms so that it will hopefully fit the bill, but I’ll let you readers determine that.

Handling all art duties is Rachel Bennett, though some of you might know her from her online handle – “Kobb”. When I decided that Four Kingdoms absolutely had to be a comic, I absolutely had to ask Rachel first. Her work exudes a bit of that familiar “Redwall” feel, but the characters have more expression, their gestures hold more weight – they feel more real when Rachel handles them, so now, because of that, Four Kingdoms has an art style and character designs wholly unique to any other kind of fantasy comic tale. I’ll let Rachel talk a bit about how she draws inspiration for her artwork and why she ultimately decided to work on the comic – perhaps in a subsequent blog post!

So why is this a comic and not a novel, you ask? The answer is pretty simple: I looked at a recent Redwall tale – “High Rhulain” – then I looked at David Petersen’s “Mouse Guard: Fall 1152”. Clearly one of these things made a tremendous impression on me! The amazing artwork and immediately relatable characters of David’s world give me and Rachel a bar to aspire to as we create The Four Kingdoms. There was something tangible and immediate to the world of “Mouse Guard” that just wasn’t there anymore in “Redwall”. It was a world that not only was thought out and detailed, but looked exactly the way it did in the creator’s head. This kind of artistic honesty is a cornerstone of Four Kingdoms, and Rachel and I are working very hard to bring a new and exciting world for you all to visit, interesting and likable characters for you to befriend, and intriguing plotlines for you to experience.

Now that the introductions and backgrounds are out of the way, I’ll tantalize all you readers with a brief summary of what to expect from our fantastical tale of high adventure…

“Great events like these only occur once every so often. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that every detail be recorded, that every thought be rendered without expense, else the future generations may forget why the world has changed so.”

Many long harvests ago, the seven races of the land fought a terrible and bitter war that ultimately came to shape the Four Kingdoms, each set to a point on the compass.

To the North, the Canid maintain a border guard, keeping the barbaric Ermehn tribes weak and powerless.

To the East, the Felis study scrolls and record history as accurately as they can, while simultaneously striving to be the most ‘civilized’ of the kingdoms.

To the South, the Vulpin are at war with themselves – old customs and new ideas clashing in ways they could never have foreseen.

To the West, the Tamian and Lutren races rule as one to defend their home from Polcan invaders from the sea and terrifying ‘crawlers’ that inhabit the dark forests of the Western Deep.

As each kingdom struggles to keep order, a disillusioned warrior sets out from the lifeless lands to the North, ten of his greatest warriors in tow. Behind him, he leaves a trail of death, destruction, and terror.

Forever following in his wake is a group of warriors – a group of allies – called together by fate to hunt down and defeat these aggressors before the kingdoms fall back into war, a war that the fragile Four Kingdoms would not survive…

Stay tuned as we explore more of this new world – you might even catch a sneak peak of events and characters to come!

For now, signing off!

-AK