Beyond the Western Deep

We hope that all of our readers celebrating Thanksgiving had a great one, and that everyone is having a wonderful November!

Because there are so many updates for our various projects, I’m gonna put those AT THE BOTTOM of this post, so we can focus on the real meat and potatoes of this update, which is thanking our amazing readership and community for all their contributions to the world of the Western Deep over the years!

Our first piece is from Andrew Pieterson, who wanted to capture the mystique of our ermehn anti-hero as he looked over Deltrada Garrison and puzzled out his next move. As Andrew said in his email: “There’s always more to figure out about him, isn’t there?” True, very true!

This incredible piece of a nameless one-armed ermehn warrior from Chapter 1 came to us as a commission by Cpat, with artwork by Panthera Arven. Cpat had previously commissioned a piece of another background character from Chapter 1, an ermehn fighting off canid troops to protect his family during the Dabheid scene. In Cpat’s words: “This little scene may take place during the Deltrada’s attack. Or perhaps this guy was one of Ashtor and Eira’s “bodyguards” (as mentioned in chapter 2 page 49), and he fought to death to protecting them, or once his task done–and knowing the fall of his tribe–he went into a last fight against the nearest canid patrol, for honor.”

“I imagined that he was one of the last of his tribe to perish. This fan art was partially inspired by one of my high school teachers. He’s often talked about his father, who had lost an arm in war. He said that his father had incredible strength in his remaining arm, as if his body redirected on it all the “power” of the lost arm. I imagine something comparable for our one-armed ermehn, and he won’t sell his fur cheaply. But now he’s exhausted, desperate, and waiting for his fate.”

Just incredible stuff, Cpat! And Panthera Arven’s incredible attention to detail really helps pull us into this scene like nothing else. Thank you so much for sharing this with us!

This piece was actually drawn on paper and handed to me at Rose City Comic Con back in 2019 by none other than Chuck Melville, aka CPAM, whose work I unfortunately wasn’t aware of at the time he gave this to me!

As an early pioneer in self-published and web-published anthro comics, I wish I’d been able to talk with him more about his experiences there–but sadly we just recently learned that Chuck passed away from cancer last year. We’re incredibly touched to have made such an impression on Chuck that he would render our characters like this, and plan to continue to cherish this wonderful artwork in the years to come.

You’ve no doubt seen these “six characters” art memes making the rounds periodically over the years! We’ve also been pleasantly surprised to see a few Western Deep characters make it onto some artist’s roundups! This one by Miishabean features a rather debonair-looking Bevan, sans hood, ready to break some bones and maybe a few hearts along the way!

NissanDriver surprised us with this really cool conceptual piece of an older Dakkan, presumably after stepping into his father’s role as Captain of the Lutren Sea Guard! This version of Dakkan sports a cape instead of diplomatic robes because, in his words, “Capes are cooler” (valid) and the staff remains–but has been reinforced with steel on either side to help repel bladed weapons more effectively. Love the look, Nissan! :)

 

As you can imagine, Rathik’s noble sacrifice earlier in Chapter 4 (or perhaps ignoble depending on how you interpret it) evoked a lot of strong emotions in readers, leading to some absolutely incredible guest art. This piece, submitted by J. LaMagna, arrived in our inbox just before Rathik’s neck met the business end of a canid blade–but if the big lug was still around you can bet he would appreciate the heroic portrayal!

This wonderful hero piece, rendered by starlightsktchs, always struck me as a really cool composition! I love the poses for each of the three protagonists here, and the subtle but unmistakable presence of Hardin in the background–looming, as he tends to do, over all the events to come. The broken “Welcome to Aisling” sign is the cherry on top, for sure!

A birthday present for Rachel by Little Runt creator and friend of the comic Temiree (happy birthday yourself, there!) resulted in this fantastic piece of Quinlan leaping through the treetops of the Western Deep–clearly enjoying himself more in this picture than at any point since the comic’s story officially began!

Tracy Butler of Lackadaisy fame has been an immensely positive influence on Western Deep since its earliest days, so the fact we have multiple pieces of Western Deep characters rendered in her signature style is basically the coolest thing in the world for us. This piece of Bevan, the linework for which I have framed up on my office wall, was done as a thank-you for contributing to the Lackadaisy animated pilot Kickstarter campaign. If you haven’t checked that out yet, you really should!

Kenosh has often been referred to as the “super mad otter dad,” which we don’t necessarily disagree with. This delightful piece, scanned in and emailed to us by CameronKuni, portrays the gruff lutren ambassador/war hero at his most cantankerous. THIS is the face of a guy you don’t want to get on the wrong side of, and we think Cameron absolutely nailed it!

WE LOVE WESTERN DEEP OCs! Seriously, one of the highest honors for any property, we think, are original characters that are designed to fit into the world we’ve built. They naturally invite new interpretations of stories, new locations, and new relationships with characters we already know. SnailNoodle’s canid character, Gear–an inventor type and not really cut out for the hardships of life in the canid military–is one of those folks and I absolutely love the red merle fur coloring on this fellow!

Carolyn Paplham has been a regular reader and commenter on Western Deep going back a long ways, so we were incredibly excited to see her take on Quinlan! He doesn’t really take too many opportunities to feel superior to… well, anyone, so seeing him with a smug smirk of any kind was a really fun surprise! He looks like he just watched Crim trip over his own tail in front of his tesque students and is enjoying the moment of schadenfreude.

BlazeSilverWolf graced us with this wonderful piece portraying a rather out-of-the-loop Hardin trying and failing to provide a timely and culturally relevant compliment. The idea that Ashtor might be more up to speed on what “the youths” are up to these days is actually one of the funnier elements of this piece for me, but honestly BSW’s take on Hardin is so on point that seeing him cross his arms and go full tsundere over POGCHAMP brought quite the grin to my face.

Speaking of grins, how could we forget Gluma aka Sneakygnida and his amazing portrayal of Bevan after what I have to imagine is a years-long montage of him lifting boulders of increasingly large sizes. Evidently, the notion of Bevan becoming as strong as Rathik is also a possibility accompanied by Bevan gaining special powers that allow him to shoot magic swords from a mere glance. Truly he is a force to be reckoned with. Sneakgnida has given us some amazing artwork over the years, so much so that when we needed a go-to artist to help us render out scenes and concept art for War of the Western Deep, we went to him!

I love love love Fortunata Fox’s incredibly distinctive art style, so imagine my delight when I saw that in another of these wonderful “draw six characters” art challenge (boosted up to nine because FF’s love of Legoshi, Asriel, and Weekly couldn’t be contained!), Fortunata had graced us with her rendition of the belligerent and war-crime-happy canid general, Clovis! I absolutely love the expression Fortunata went with for him. I can see it perfectly meshing with his “WELL, ACTUALLY”-ing Kenosh as they part ways (“You’re not being detained, you’re being retained.”) Also pleasant to see were Hopper from Tooth & Tail (an RTS video game I wrote for a while back by Pocketwatch Games) and T̶h̶e̶ ̶K̶i̶n̶g̶ The Stranger from Armello, the wonderful digital board game (soon to be ACTUAL board game) by League of Geeks!

This wonderful physical piece of guest art came to us from JamieDrewIt, and portrays a version of Quinlan that I think was very prescient for the time (three years ago by my count). This version of Quinlan looks self-assured and ready for whatever the world has to throw at him–a far cry from the character we started with all those long years ago. I love how this piece turned out, and I hope the physical version has persisted to this day!

This rendition of the Volume 1 cover art by kasiky13 is an instant favorite–not just because of the adorable chibi stylization of Quinlan and Hardin, but the medium itself. I have a fondness for any art rendered on classic line-ruled notebook paper, and I don’t know if it’s merely what kasiky13 had handy at the time or was doodling in class or something (goodness knows that’s where so many of the best drawings come from) but I absolutely love the piece and am happy to be able to share it here :)

A two-parter, thanks to Rachel NEEDING to dive in and draw a follow-up to Shay/Shyranno’s original piece, featuring Rathik showing off to a less-than-impressed Rhosyn. Shay’s been sending over absolutely killer artwork for years now, portraying our cast in their distinctive animation-inspired style. Heck, some of the pieces we get look ripped right out of a Netflix series or something! In this case, Rathik’s impromptu flexing got Rachel to respond with a follow-up, with Sratha-din pariah Rathik appreciating the artwork in-fiction (and Ashtor trying and failing to bring him down a few pegs).

Mitch de la Guardia has been a member of the Western Deep readership for about as long as we’ve had a comic, so we were elated to see him tackle one of our main characters in his style not too long ago! Quinlan, seen here in “awesome forest scout-slash-fantasy ranger mode”, is looking particularly cool–and I’m sure he appreciates it! Goodness knows I do!

We couldn’t agree more, Meadowrose Art! We haven’t been able to find any follow-ups on this, but even without being too familiar with the source material, Meadowrose did an incredible job bringing Quinlan to life. He looks mighty chipper here, and that grin of his is just spot-on awesome!

This piece was sent to us by Jason Rodriguez, who is studying to be an architect and wanted to try his hand at a canid stronghold! We love the details here, and think it totally nails the canid aesthetic and looks right out of the sketchbook of a canid architect! Any ermehn worth their salt would steer far clear of this place. Thank you so much for the drawing, Jason!

Our last guest art piece for this post is from RM Fung, who has sent in a few pieces over the years that we’ve shared! This piece features a future (dare I say modern) version of Nessa ringing in the new year in style! I’ll let RM set the scene:

“Here is a snapshot of Nessa in the far future celebrating the coming of a new year. People of all races from all across Dunia living in the city have gathered at the heart to watch some dancers performing on stage to everyone’s delight. Even among the sounds and colorful lights of the Vulpin capital’s festivities, everyone remembers that sharing the joy is not merely exclusive to Navran, but nations everywhere within Dunia and beyond. The presence of everyone in their unique shapes and sizes is a testament to that belief and will remain so for generations to come.”

This piece truly speaks to the heart of what folks are fighting for in the world of Western Deep: a world where everyone, no matter their kingdom or land of origin, can come together and celebrate as one people.

Since Rachel and I started posting pages of Western Deep (now going on nearly 13 years!), we’ve been absolutely floored by the incredible support and love that our readers and fans have shown us. So we thought it was only fitting that on this Thanksgiving we spend a little time thanking all of our wonderful contributors who have helped us further realize the world of Western Deep!

From all of us on the Western Deep team: THANK YOU! <3

(Oh, and if you want to send us guest art for a future Guest Art Appreciation post, or share it with folks on social media, you can either send us an email as hello(at)westerndeep.net, or you can @ us on Twitter (@TheWesternDeep) or BlueSky (WesternDeep).

Oh, yes! Now those updates I promised before:

• COMIC UPDATES! We wrote a little while ago that our plan for the remainder of Volume 4 was to thumbnail the entirety of the following sequence before finalizing pages, and Rachel has been hard at work on that front. We’re starting to get some really fun thumbnails for the next sequence, and considering we’ve been working on this comic for over 10 years, it’s no small thing for me to say I’ve been excited about this upcoming scene since the earliest days of the comic.
• KICKSTARTER UPDATES! Volume 3 proofs were sent over to Rachel and they look quite good! A minor brightness issue needs rectifying on the cover, but aside from that, we’re getting ready to go into full production and hope to have more updates soon there. Music of the Western Deep‘s vinyl album proof has been approved and is being produced as we speak. Nolan’s also received the full score books and is getting everything ready for signing and shipping. We’re excited to get all the physical rewards mailed out soon!
• GAME UPDATES! We’re planning another round of in-game animations with our partners, Knights of the Light Table, to bring a more fully featured introductory sequence into War of the Western Deep. Meanwhile we’re continuing talks with publishers and financiers to get an idea of what they can offer, and whether that would be the right move for us. Our combat system is also getting fully refactored on the back-end, so it’s no longer a noodly mess of ActionList nodes, but an extensible C# script that we can use for multiple enemy types down the road!