Song of the Eastern Sands: Teaser 4
With Boston Comic Con approaching (NEXT WEEK!) and a looming deadline just ahead, we’ve decided to forgo a page this week so Rachel and I can get our proverbial houses in order before breaking for the week. Next week we’ll likely put up one of our “here’s a map of the convention floor and where our table is” posts, and the next page of Chapter 2 will go up the following week.
SO! To help tide everyone over until then, I figured I would lift the lid a little bit more regarding both Song of the Eastern Sands and the short comic that we’ll be featuring in front of it, starring Cain and Yurk.
The Ermehn you see in the featured image above is Asha — the final member of the main quartet starring in Song of the Eastern Sands.
Above, one of the first collections by Jerome of the full cast, done in September of last year. A lot has changed since then, of course, but the overall script, story, and character backgrounds have remained. The only major differences now are related to the character designs themselves, which have been cleaned up, tweaked, and improved to better reflect both their backgrounds and personalities.
But, as can be the case when you’re working on a story like this, there can be surprises! This was the case with Cain and Yurk, two previously unnamed characters that made their reveal in a mood piece that Jerome did very early on (shown in the very first reveal). Jerome expressed a desire to put those two front and center in their own side story, so we hashed out a simple four-page tale that captures just one of what we imagine is many many absurd adventures.
Before we begin publishing Song of the Eastern Sands here, we’ll be posting up the Cain and Yurk story — think of it as a fun first glimpse into everyday life in Nessa.
Anyway, next week we’ll be posting up something related to Boston Comic Con, and then we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled program with a fresh new page on August 8th. Until then, see you in the comments! :)
Looking good! I can’t wait for SOTES and all the excitement that will ensue! Good luck in Boston and be sure to have some fun.
Fantastic graphics :D – fantastic draws Mr. Jerome, in this style as I do indeed love it too :D :D :D (In a similar technique, I have drawing but only in the case of traditionally-paper, pencil and watercolor XD) but still I can not/I’m not so well trained my hand, so I can’t fast and with such ease draw ;) – Something fantastic Mr. Jerome :D – already I can’t wait to start the adventure in Nessa ^^
And I have a question – these two cool guys as a duo of will be like Quinlan and Dakkan in “Song of the Eastern Sands” ? (AlreadyI really liked them ^^)
ButI feel very sorry and at this point, a little bit of regret that Poland is not in America (XD), awfully regret that I can not be in those markets in Boston …:( Ahhh … :C – if I were in America, I’d even from the other end of the country drove a car to meet you both ^^ :)
And how well I understood that we’ll find out what Dakkan would say and whether Quin is live, only for two weeks? … :p :O
It’s too bad I live on the west coast. Otherwise I would have totally gone to one of the conventions by now.
Also, I really like the collection of art this week. Looks like this 4-person group is likely to get into a lot of errr…crazy situations.
I’m super glad that Cain and Yurk are going to get some more screen-time. It’s definitely going to be a welcoming change of scenery considering how BWD’s cast is going through Depressville atm.
I swear that one day I’ll attend to one of these conventions and support you all, but all I can do right now is to wish you guys luck on your trip to Boston!
I know it has been said before, but it looks like theirs is gonna be a Mr. Shy and Mr. Daring kinda partnership, ain’t it?
Wait, isn’t Boston where Fallout 4 is about to take place? I don’t think it’s safe to go there!
Whoo! Looking forward to all of this. Good luck, guys; hope you have fun at the ‘con!
Something’s not right…
This Asha, she looks so… haapy? Hapey? Happu…. not sad.
Almost…too not sad.
Look at her, waving to her high up lutren friend. Heart apparently filled with some kind of emotion that appears to be the opposite of revulsion.
There’s a complete absence of murder, a paucity of torrential rain, an almost total lack of betrayal and abandonment. There isn’t even anyone lying bleeding to death in a muddy puddle!
Though admittedly that could be happening just out of frame.
Ok, Alex, Rachel and Jerome, I’ll give your unorthadox new storytelling technique the benifit of the doubt. Just this once.
Oh shush, on average Dakkan has had a perfectly happy adventure, and there have even been moments where Quinlan has not been completely sidelined by more older, competent, or important people.
Lol, I can see it now. Zoom the picture out there are mounds of corpses just below here, all bloodied.
“Oh, by the gods, I’m so happy that we survived!”
“Yes, Asha, we know, but look at all the poor souls who didn’t.”
“But we made it. Isn’t that cause to be happy?”
“A little respect for the dead, please?
(Asha runs off, waving her arms happily, while the other three look at each other and shake their heads)
All joking aside, having a bubbly, excitable Ermehn lady on the SOTES team promises to be a lot of fun no matter how the story progresses.
Long-time lurker and first time commenter here.
I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who’s working on this comic for inspiring me to explore more non-traditional settings for my own writing. Animal fantasy featuring prominent non-european inspirations, woo! :D
Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Salmon party!
It’s always good to get new readers. I hope to see you around again!
And if you would like, you can always post anything related to your writing up here; I, for one, would be happy to see it.
Good luck!
Thanks!
I haven’t written much so far, but I’ve always been a bit curious to see if the various Malagasy cultures could easily translate into fantasy (which turns out to be very difficult, considering how down-to-earth they tend to be, with any supernatural elements left frustratingly vague). Reading this comic, with the designs of the different races (especially the Polcan and the Lutren), helped me a lot with weaving in local culture with an already established universe I’d had for almost two decades now. I even recently went as far as to imagine a second separate universe so I could play with the elements that couldn’t fit in the first one…
This comic has a lot of European cultural influences, especially the Squirrel Boys, the Doggy Boys and the Weasel Boys.
Yes, those are European influences, but those are handled differently in BWD than fantasy usually handles them.
Typically, you’d have a land where an European-inspired “stone castles and taverns” culture dominates (and where most of the protagonists hail from), with Asian-inspired cultures being represented as faraway exotic lands relevant only for travel plots. And then you have tribal cultures represented solely as background décors (and as an origin for one sidekick or two).
In BWD, the Canid (the apparent closest thing to “stone castles and taverns” Europeans) aren’t represented as being any more culturally dominant than the others, the Ermehn certainly aren’t in the background, and even though we still have to witness them, the Felis and the Vulpin kingdoms aren’t represented as overseas lands with little influence on the setting. Those might seem like minor differences, but I find them refreshing all the same.
Hello there :) Don’t be angry on me my friends, but finaly someone from Europa; So helleErkhyan, wlecome on Salmon party and nice to meet you ^^ :D
And yes, thesyllizeator – there are many Eropean things in BWD ;)
Ah, you mean the stereotypical medieval fiefdom setting! Yes, there are a great many stories around that try to avoid falling into that.
Something about this was bothering me deep inside, and after pondering it for a while I figured out why.
What I don’t understand yet is how common the Ermehn are in Nessa in the first place. So far, it seems to be implied that there are only a few Ermehn in Nessa (we know that they exist, due to our friends Yurk and Asha), but what we don’t know is whether this is true or if we have a situation similar to the “there are more Irish people in New York City than in Ireland”, with Ireland being the wastes, New York being Nessa, and the Ermehn being the Irish (wierd analogy, I know).
And there’s one other thing. I am fairly sure that if we polled the regular readers of BWD as to what their favorite race of Dunia was, the Ermehn would win. People tend to sympathize with a group of rebels trying to fight back to stop their own genocide. I do not intend to attack Alex’s or Jerome’s storytelling here, but I am somewhat disappointed that the SOTES cast includes another Ermehn character as its fourth member instead of something more common to Nessa. I was sort of hoping for a Felis, trying and often failing to fit into Vulpin society after leaving his/her home of neighboring Gair for character backstory reasons. SOTES looks like it is attempting to form a cast of outcasts from mainstream Vulpin society (Lutren, Polcan, Ermehn), and I doubt one could do much better than incorporating a member of the race most at odds with the Vulpin as a whole. But, of course, that might have been too obvious. It isn’t my story, and I don’t get to see the notes.
I really don’t have a good way to end this. Please don’t take this badly; I still love BWD and the world of Dunia, and I’m still excited for SOTES, but I’m still a little unsure about this Ermehn issue.
-FM
I like Lutren the best, Ermehn are always so grumpy. (They remind me of Scots not Irish though)
Right, the Ermehn are definitely more Scottish than Irish; I just was using the Irish population as an example.
I will need to see more of the Vulpin, Felis, and Polcan before I can make an informed decision about my favorite species of Dunia.
For me, it’s just most ordinary Immigration on the background of racial persecution/nationality pesecution – this type of emigration we can observe in almost every period of history – immigrate because of the persecution of racial/ethnic/religious, etc. And now what’s happening – for example, right now the far East Ukraine is a war and people are flocking to Western Ukraine, and for us to Poland…
Lol, I was not here for two days and after reading comments I’m little scared that “Song of Eastern sands” already somewhere are published on another website, and I do not know about it O.o ; If it is not yet published. How is it? Please tell me :( …