Beyond the Western Deep

A couple exerts from an out-of-breath Cain help to indicate that forming full lines of dialogue while keeping up with his lanky friend is easier said than done. Or, you know, not said. Because he’s too exhausted to speak.

But this does give us a nice opportunity to appreciate the dilapidated ruins spread gloomily before our protagonists!

Obviously one of the elements here that we wanted to capture was Cain and Yurk’s parkour-inspired movement through the space. Jerome has some first-hand experience with parkour, and we first used it as a reference point way back during Song of the Eastern Sands, as Asha chased down a canid assassin across the rooftops of Nessa. However, Cain and Yurk were born adjacent to parkour, in their very first concept sketch (where they simply appeared as random characters Jerome used to help build the tone of SotES).

As you can see, Cain and Yurk are introduced in their proto-forms in the top piece, but there’s some hardcore rooftop-leapin’ happening in the sketch beneath. As we built out the characters for their first short comic (which released prior to Song of the Eastern Sands) we gave them both this skillset, as it made sense that two rapscallions living rough in the mean streets of Nessa would know the fastest way to get around, even if it meant leaping from rooftop to rooftop.

All that is to say, Cain and Yurk have very fun movement styles, and it was a ton of fun to see Jerome visualize this element of their characters on the page.

This week for guest art, a piece from Shay! You might remember Shay’s amazing animated-esque style from a few weeks back, where had at least one reader actually believe we’d landed a deal at Netflix for a show (if only)! This piece features some ermehn we haven’t seen in a little while: Eira and Rhosyn!

I loooove the cartoon stylings, Shay! You’ve nailed their personalities so perfectly, and their streamlined designs look wonderful. I really dig this style–thank you SO much for sharing this wonderful piece with us!