Song of the Eastern Sands: Page 27
A bit grim, I’ll concede — but when you’re living in a medieval world lacking in the judicial structure of the modern day, harsh punishments to deter criminals are the norm. Also, even if they weren’t living in a medieval fantasy world, they’re a trio of thieves with sacks full of money in the middle of an active crime scene. The circumstantial evidence is most certainly not in their favor.
As many of you saw on our Tumblr/Twitters, Rachel is experimenting with a design for our very first Western Deep t-shirt! We wanted something that looked unique and interesting, even if you were completely unaware of the comic’s existence. The general design is as such:
We’ve already received some fantastic feedback from readers and friends on ways to improve the design (most prominently, because we’ve decided to stick with digital printing instead of screen printing, we can actually look at giving Quin his true colors, as opposed to using the stylized 2-ink method as in the test image above).
We’ll also be looking at heather cotton shirts, instead of this solid color. Heather uses a variety of different colors to create a speckled/textured look, which looks a great deal better in our opinion.
The “Beyond the Western Deep” logo will also be on the back of the shirt.
So, what do you think?
Right now the shirt is planned simply as a convention thing — but I know some of our readers will likely want to get their hands on them. Before we place the order, I’m considering opening them up here for readers for a week or two, and we can handle it directly through Paypal. In a nutshell, you would pay for the shirt+flat rate shipping, tell me what size you want, and I would fold those additional orders into our initial run of shirts. I’d then mail the shirts out when they arrived. Thoughts?
For guest art this week, I wanted to share this fun piece from Jerijune that I’d forgotten to post before! It’s a character we haven’t seen in a while, because he’s been very busy.
Very busy being dead.
Good ol’ Clovis, professional grumpus and serial jerk! We haven’t seen too many different artists’ takes on Clovis, Jerijune, so this was a pleasant surprise! Thank you so much for the incredible work!
That last sentence doesn’t sound too good.
The mystery intruders systematically executing the guards is not a good sign for our trip of thieves. If anything, it’s a sign that things are about to get much worse.
The shirts plan sounds like a good one. Hopefully they’ll become popular enough eventually to get a permanent spot in the store, but I understand the challenges of ordering small quantities on an irregular basis makes that risky right now. We can also hope for more different designs in the future.
Speaking of merchandise, how long will it be until chapter two is ready for print?
Agree with you, specially if these assassins are paid for “no witness”.
Are you planning to make apparel with just a simple logo (perhaps an emblem and motto of one of the Dunia’s realms)? I’ve always been keen on minimalist aesthetics, and even though I love your work and the character is cute (is that a younger version of Quin?) I would *not* buy that shirt. The design is too busy to my liking, with the two different fonts of different sizes, and the character is focused at something off-screen making it feel like I’m seeing only half of the picture. The color scheme is nice though!
Eh, I don’t know. I would not consider that a busy shirt. Compared to a lot of other fandom shirts or shirts in general I’ve seen, it’s fairly compact. I’m pretty ambient about Quinlan peering off the shirt at something we can’t see, even if an added treewalker might be awesome. I do agree that it may help to have the comic name in one of the fonts used on the front though.
I’m not too keen on the text myself, having had a little time to step back. It’ll definitely get a revamp… and I might revisit another design concept or two that I rejected back when I thought the number of colors in the design would matter. Stay tuned, and thanks for the honest feedback.
I got a bad feeling about what the Sand Spiders are gonna run into…
I agree with Fourth on the shirt thing. Since I can’t really go to any cons (let alone the US) I hope the shirts do make it to the store. Same goes to the hard copies of Chapter 2
Someone apparently woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. I have so many possible theories to what or who it could be and for what reason but there’s just too many variables going on right now to make a conclusive point.
I mentioned it on tumblr, but I’m satisfied that you guys will hopefully keep Quin’s normal colors instead of the 2 tone style here. And I gotta agree a little with tronn here (at least in the scenario department) It would look a lot better if we have whoever Quin is drop kicking in da face show up in this picture, (maybe Crim?) so that the image wont look distracted.
Lastly, I love the portrait Jerijune. I bet Clovis had something like this in his office, commissioned and painted by the fainest of painters, including the one where he single-handedly ended the Oran Rebellion while riding on a horse (oops they dont exist!)…too bad that office will be empty without Mr. Canid Emoji.
Speaking of which, oh dear lord! I’m anxious to see how Tosch is going to react to his demise.
The plot thickens! Just like blood wow! This page is great, loving the contrast of warm and cool between the shadows and light. Also I like how fast things are moving now. Also also, continuing to kill it with that thumbnail dialogue!
As for the shirt, it’s not quite my cup of tea for wearable apparel (I, like Tronn, tend more towards minimalist design), but it would make a fantastic poster. It has a great propaganda vibe, like something you’d find hanging on the community bulletin board or the back of a Tesque dojo. Also, I like the two-toned approach, and, personally, I don’t think his pose/glance is distracting at all. It might be more engaging if his focus/action was downwards-oriented, I suppose, to emphasize the dangers he’s sailing over/attacking. But all told, this is the sort of thing I’d hang on my wall, for sure.
Oh, also a question! About how old are the members of our intrepid troupe? I’ve been imagining Rook as at least a couple years older than the other two, but I’m not really sure why.
Yeah, the challenge is that minimalist designs work great among people who are already fans. Nation symbols/flags would be super fun to put on shirts for sure. But we also have to be eye-catching in a convention setting, and put out a shirt that looks cool to someone who doesn’t know anything about BtWD. I’m trying to end up with something that both groups will be drawn to! :)
Fair point! And certainly no easy task finding that balance. The best option would obviously be to have two different designs, but I can see where, budget-wise, that might not quite work out.
If/when you do get to the point where you’re making more shirts, a flag across the entire torso would be awesome.
Personally I love the shirt, despite the saturated colors. but I have fairly strange tastes.
The only thing that really jumped out at me as being “off” with the shirt was the color scheme. It totally looks a BWD Christmas special with the red and green!!
…
Actually, now I just saw Rachel’s post where the colors/fonts have been changed. The new color scheme is an improvement in my opinion. It’s a bit more…earthy? As for the font, I think it was also used in the prologue? It seems easier to read in comparison to the old version.
So, I like the overall style in both cases, but I would consider the tweaks made to the newer one to be improvements. If I were try and change anything, it would be the placement of the BWD logo. Either that or include some sort of shorthand identifier on the front in addition to the full logo on the back?
Bit of a logic flaw there, Asha- you’re getting caught if you stay and only probably caught if you try to leave. There’s more of Rook’s experience- I wonder how much is personal. So far, all of the Spiders seem to still have their hands- as of now at least.
Oh hey,more corpses. Just good ol’ Nessian fun in the sun, amright? Anyway they need to run for it now.
I love the tone of your picture, Jeri!