2.15
Rana, don’t be mean to the guard >:I
Late late late page, haha. Right on the ass end of my “one update per week” promise. On the plus side, next week is the last week of school, and I’m almost done writing out my final papers. Almost there.
An interview! from Xcentrikz, for your viewing pleasure.
Pimp of the week: What Birds Know by Friberg and Thorelli. A mature fantasy story about teenaged girls with some great art and characters. I really like the clean style! One little crit is that the pacing is a bit slow, but things have gotten suuper interesting in the last post or two, so now is the perfect time to start reading if you want to be abreast of the action 
And with over 400 pages in the archive, its also something nice to fill the time while waiting for me to slog my way through another page, haha.
*edit* My friend Alexandra made this and it is cracking me up
FIRST COMMENT
But, awesome page, wonder whats being thrown? plates?
keep it comming!
late doesnt bother me, as long as it’s updated eventually (weekly is nice though)
Ohmy looks like things are gonna (already?) get nasty @.@
And.. YAY UPDATE
D
Lol, thought I would be waiting til tomorrow. Thanks
Great page!
Like LMP said, the lateness doesn’t matter. The wait was and is always certainly worth it!
love your perspective. is she going to catch her parents doing unholy things! i cant wait to see…
Thats what I was thinking, too.
I’m quite frightened as to what’s happening or going to happen. The lighting on this page really brings out that feeling. : 0
Good luck with your other work!
Either Luca and his wife (I don’t believe we ever got to know her name) are having crazy hot royalty sex or one of them killed the other. At least that’s my guess.
At first I was sitting here thinking, “Heehee, ‘occupied,’ riiiiight.” The crashing combined with the meeting earlier tells me that Phe isn’t too happy with his highness, though.
That poor guard. I wonder how long he’s been listening to that.
ahaha, or both at once.
It’s a sign of a healthy relationship when you can have the vicious argument and the makeup sex at the exact same time.
Hahaha, yussssss
Hm … either they are fighting or they’re “makin’ bacon” if you know what I mean. Hopefully they’re fighting otherwise Rana will be scarred for life (or at least be stuck with the face for a good portion of it).
In other news … Yay another hat!
Just a little question before I leave and you don’t have to read my crazy comments. Rana takes after her dad physically but does she share his views? I know she’s concerned for her mother but her resemblances to her father suggests to me that she’s closer to him (at least mentally).
Well, fighting can also be scarring XD There is plenty of bad behavior to go around in this comic.
It will be a lot more obvious later, but in general Rana really dislikes her dad. He isn’t often around and from what she can tell he’s just angry and/or working all the time. She really hates the fact that she looks like him (and vice versa). Ironically, her general bitterness makes her personality more similar to his than either of her siblings.
Interesting …
I’m eager to see how Rana and the rest of the family (excluding her father) will react to Angora and Pinter should they ever meet.
I get the feeling next page will be a doozy! And you just linked my secondmost favorite webcomic!
That last panel is such win. Eee, I’m looking forward to next week a whole bunch!
…I go and read the interview, come back and find there are ten times the amount of comments. Wow.
Well, wonderful page, the expressions are great, and the slight slouch the guard has in his last panel is brilliant…
wow, your really good at expressions, Rana looks really freaked! ^w^
OMG! not the TINKLES!
awesome page. I <3 the expressions.
OMG! not the TINKLES!
awesome page. I <3 the expressions.
thnx XD
…
…
6_9
my second most favorite emote XD If only there was a way to give it teefs
IO
Totally cool
I love it <3. But I STILL want a new hairdo for Rana 
Sheesh Rana. If you’re lucky they’ll be fighting and not having sex.
XDDDDD
:B
…
O_O
D8
Rana really looks like her dad on this page (I mean a strong family resemblance, not that she looks like a man). Really cool that you pulled that off.
Pfft that’s what guards are for. To be ignored or bribed
I really love that deep sunset glow in the first few pages and also how nicely you transitioned from warm outside colors to cool inside OMINOUS colors B(
Also my guess is Phe’s totally breaking a beer bottle on a counter somewhere
THIS RUMBLE’S GOIN’ DOWN YA’LL >B(
Seriously, Rana. Nobody sent you there ._.
Excellent interview! It’s the one I’ve liked the most, so far. I love your comic :3
Oh, another thing; just a little crit. You have the tendency to estructure the panels a little. The awesomeness would be much more appreciated if the panels were more dynamic, and with that the story would flow much better, like in the first pages of Chapter 1; the dialog ballons weren’t all inside the square/panel, as well as some backgrounds. It was more playful and fun for the eye to watch
Anyhoo, keep the excellence coming! x)
The balloons escape the panels here too, maybe its just not as fun to look at since we’re not in the jungle or running around (or naked) anymore. As for panels, I am an unabashed supporter of 90 degree angles ;_; (those are patriotic tears)
I’m with you bro!
Angley panels are too much for me!
but not angora-y panels ar har har
lol, I geddit; it’s part of your style :B
If Rana is surprised (and she ought to be used to such things), things are bad.
I love this comic.
I love it especially because of the obvious care and attention to detail you’ve put into this world/story. You know exactly how each culture fits in with the others, you know your biology (<3), you know your art–expressions, proportions, perspective, everything. This is nothing but joy for me to read. I don't know everyone's story yet, but I can't wait to find out!
A question, out of curiosity: how long does getting the flats for these down take you?
Good luck on your finals–and don't stress out!
Thanks for your nice comment! And flats take the least amount of time, thankfully, probably about 45 mins to an hour. All the shading afterwards is another 5-6 hours XC
More than anything, this page makes me think, “Awww, Rana inherited her father’s scowl.” And I’m sure she would hate that. I kind of feel sorry for nameless guard dude, though, he’s just doing his job.
That guard totally has dimplecheeks. And a hat with a jell-o-mold design on top!
Mr. Jell O. Dimplecheeks, awww.
Love that first panel! It looks… painstakingly perspective’d haha.
And you are probably knee-deep in papers right now, so good luck!
Oh Rana, you should know better than to interrupt them when they’re fighting. You might get hit with a stray vase.
This has turn into a drama scene. Hurry cue the dramatic music.
Awww the guard’s hat looks like a barnacle. Now I’m on the edge of my seat to see what happens D:
A barnacle? lol, that makes sense, coming from a Rockfish XD
he’s wearing a barnacle just for the halibut
:B
pfffffffffffff XD
THANK YA THANK YA I’LL BE HERE ALL NIGHT FOLKS *bows*
I couldn’t resist…I have no sole -_-
lol, If it wasn’t for the “crash” this would be a classic “things that I want never see my parents doing” scene. XD
Is that crazy tiger snuggling in there with them too?
Haha, I don’t know if the crazy tiger knows how to snuggle
Exactly, that’s the crash! Right, right?!
Ha ha.
I can’t argue with that logic XD
I don’t know if anyone covered this but that fan art your friend drew has Suda refering to Rana as Suda.
I think my friend wrote the text as an observer/ in her own voice
Am I the only one who thinks that the guard looks like he’s wearing a kippah?
Also, I would eat Suda’s cookie any day. ^_^
YAY!
This page is amazing! I really love the colors, and the perspective on the first panel is really solid. I can’t wait for the next page…I sense impending plot shifts in the forseeable future and a certain STRIP-ED NEATNESS impending. Goodie!
Also: your Xcentrix interview was great.
Eeee I love that guy’s dimples, he looks so googley XD You’re so good at perspective! The Fist panel is amazing.
I’m Lovin Rana’s ‘Taking-no crap-from-nobody’ attitiude when she’s on a mission. I love this page in general!
Lovely page, and such a great cliffhanger. I wonder what next page will show us. *anticipates* And the big question is… Will Rana be able to bring Suda any food?
I love WBK too! Emelie and Mattias are good friends of mine and are such great storytellers! <3
I would like to ask, what is the original image size of your comic pages (pixels x pixels)?
The lines are like 3500xsomething at 600dpi and the colors are 2150xsomething at 300dpi. Pretty big! I do them that way so they are the right size for printing (hopefully)
I love this comic. So much. It’s so richly colored, the expressions and movements are so fluid and realistic!
Also, the guard’s helmet reminds me of a yarmulke. Just me?
How does every page get better and better? I am jealous of your perspective skill.
Also, I love how dark it gets once she goes in…spooky
I think it’s great how you draw realistic-looking people, especially in a more cartoon-ish style. I had a double-take in that third panel because Rana looks so much like one of my friends there.
They gettin’ biz-zay
:wringing hands: Eeeeeexciiiiiiteeeeed! ^_^
Y’know, I just noticed it, but the first panel looks like something out of M.C. Escher’s works. Checkerboard world and stairs leading to who-knows-where.
I_I
Yow, blood pressure through the roof… have they invented aspirin in Pasori yet? I think that H.H. & H.M. need a few bottles.
Pinter and Phe have the same nose…. hmmmmm interesting. or maybe im just seeing things.
Yep, they’re in the same ethnic group
Think of it as a shared trait, like almond shaped eyes in Asians.
Oh my god, I am so excited to see what’s going to happen next.
KEEP EM COMIN.. THIS IS REALLY ONE OF THE ON LINE COMICS THAT HAS ME HOOKED ON THE MOST!!!
CANT WAIT FOR THE NEXT ONE!!!
I have a question, is Phe royal blood.
No. Luca is though.
Ok just checking
I love this comic, but I have to ask: why should she be on a diet (surely a fantasy culture doesn’t have to inherit our female body standards and obsessions? I hope the reason is something else) and why does she have a male hairline?
In Pasori culture the women (and men) tend to be pretty large, and like to maintain a higher weight. Since they’ve begun migrating down and mixing with the Santri culture, (the guys with the brown noses) they’ve adopted that culture’s more moderate body image a bit more. Luca’s family is obviously a bit mixed, and Rana would rather judge herself by Santri standards.
Her hairline is peaked, which can genetically apply to either males or females (in real life).
I like the body images backstory; I hope this will be discernible from upcoming pages too. (I personally love sidenotes but not everyone reads them.)
As for the hair, though, a cartoony style like yours relies more heavily on visual shorthand than a more detailed style would, and peaked hairline is shorthand for “man”; I am a new reader (that is, I never saw the sketch-comic so I’m learning about the characters as new pages are added here) and when Rana first showed up I had to do a double-take. There is little about her face that identifies her as female, so seeing how much care goes into these drawings, I presume that this is the effect you were after.
She is supposed to look like her dad, that is the main thing I’m trying to get across… then again, I don’t always draw the most differentiated faces in the world either XD I’ll probably go back and edit her face at some point, just because a few people have mentioned the same issue and I don’t want her looking that extremely manly, haha.
I got the dad look
, I just thought at first she was another son. It’s only because the comic is so good that things that are confusing stand out as much as they do. I think you’re doing an admirable job trying to weave all this information together.
Hi, nice comic!
You probably already know that, but ‘rana’ means ‘frog’ in italian language, ’suda’ means ‘he sweats’… while ‘luca’ is an actual male name, which leds me unconsciously to consider the other names as they were italian words. Which makes me giggle a little
‘Good evening, princess FROG!’
Hahaha XD I did not know that about the word “suda,” haha. His full name is Sudacris, though, not quite as sweaty. Actually all the kids are sort of named after amphibians, in some way
Sudacris incidentally sounds like the most awesome rapstar name ever
I just wanted to add my two cents and say that personally, I don’t think Rana looks that masculine as some have commented. She obviously takes more after her father, and while the resemblance to Luca is there she still is clearly, to me, a girl. She does come off as a little more sturdily built with rounder features, but those aren’t necessarily just male attributes and I like that you’re incorporating that into your artwork. (Also hi, I like your comic.)
…Judging by the current vote incentive, either the palace is being invaded by war bears, or Luca and Phe are into some really kinky sex…