And here’s the second round of sketches!
Isa says: The first image is the original first page draft. This page was scrapped, but I still love it. It’s original purpose was to show how introverted Emma was, but it ended up just making her look busy and lonely. Emma isn’t all that lonely, she kinda likes being alone. We ended up using Ben to do exposition about Emma’s life, which ended up being more efficient and funny. The shot of Emma carrying huge boxes was kept, allowing for some funny dialogue with Ben in their first appearance. My favorite panel here is Emma being squashed in the subway.
This has yet to happen, but something I loved to draw was Emma with the Cheshire cat because… Well, just look at that adorable jerk. The Cheshire Cat is like the ultimate cat. He’s got all the bad cats habits. Plus superpowers and the ability to talk. He’ll ruin your furniture and then give you a monologue about how it’s better that way.
Meg says: Oh wow, the first chapter. Remember how on Tuesday how I said the prologue made it into comic form pretty much intact? The first chapter went through an insane amount of revisions. Nothing we tried felt quite right. The very first take on chapter 1 involved Emma and Elaine discussing her homework in a cafe. That got scrapped. Then we moved to version 2 which had Emma finding Elaine outside the library after the fire. Ben and Elaine take Emma home and Emma turns on the air conditioner, which explodes and sends her to Oz. Meanwhile, Jack and Alice are trying to find out about the arson, an unknown Namesake being sensed in the area and Karen. This draft was written in April 2010.
Originally, Jack, Alice and Ben weren’t to be introduced until much later in the story. We weren’t going to mention Calliope at all until Emma returned from Oz. But all three of them wrote themselves into version 2 of chapter 1, and I think the story worked out much better in the long run because of it. Version 3 is the one you see on the site, with Vanessa added and Karen an actual character.
Like the prologue, chapter 1 was written in prose form. This is the beginning of it:
—–
For centuries, there have been people like me recording the stories of other people. You know them as fables, fairy tales, and mere children’s stories. For us, these are real and vital parts of our lives. We know these people, the ones that actually live out those stories that you believe are fiction. We witness the story come to life – the beginning, middle, climax and resolution.
Most stories start out with what is called in French, “the element declencheur.”
For Emma Crewe, that moment came at 2:48 p.m. on a hot day in August 2009.
—–
Emma pushed her way through the crowd that pressed up against the police barriers, the flimsy wood barely keeping the curious gawkers from getting any closer to the fire that consumed the building a few meters away. A gap formed and she spotted her sister, Elaine, calmly clicking away on her cell phone as she took pictures of the blaze.
”Elaine! Are you okay?” Emma greeted her, then coughed violently as the thick smoke wafted through the area. “Dad called me at work. He was just boarding his plane and got your text.”
”I’m fine,” Elaine replied, her eyes bright with excitement. “I’m posting these to my LiveJournal.”
“The library catches on fire with you inside and you’re posting about it on LIVEJOURNAL?”
”I got out, didn’t I?” Tongue between her teeth, Elaine pressed a couple buttons on her phone then pressed the button to turn off the screen. “It’s up on Twitter already.”
There’s something about seeing revisions and different openings to a story . . . shows REAL work put into writing and REWriting which is important. Glad you girls made sure things actually felt right before going ahead rather than have people complaining about it soon after.
Thank you! We wanted to write something we would read ourselves, and that does mean putting a lot of work into it. There was a good year and a half of work before we even got to the April 2010 draft of chapter 1, and even more work beyond that. But there’s even refinements beyond that from the first online version of the comic to the printed book. When I did an editing pass for book 1, I went through and tightened some dialogue and made a couple more things align with developments later in the story. Once book 1 was printed though, that was it. We’re not George Lucasing things.
Revision 3 (written August 26-28 and September 10, 2010) was the draft of the script that you see on site/book 1. There were a couple things cut from there as well.
Karen laughs. “You know nothing of classical music.”
“I do. A bit. Well, not the real old stuff.” Emma spots a book on Rogers and Hammerstein. “I like musicals.”
“Oh? Have you ever seen ‘Wicked’?” Karen asks.
“Yeah, when the tour premiered here in ‘05.” Emma grins. “I know the book’s darker and Elphaba’s happy ending is a bit cheesy, but I like the music.”
Karen hands her the last book, then picks up a book off the cart. She looks around, then places it on top of the stack. “Why don’t you take this with you? It’s an introduction to classical music.”
Well I’m glad you DID cut “Wicked”, it’s nothing at all to do with BAUM’S Pure Oz.
Thank you! And it does work better without.
Are you sure that the blue art is not camera footage of either of the two of you puzzling over “Namesake”?
As for the black, someone is not a cat person. Mind you, with the Cheshire cat, who would be?
The ultimate cat! I love it!
Sam is right. These images give us a tiny glimpse of all of the work that you put into this to make the result seem so assured and effortless. I hope that the fact that we discuss your characters as if they were real shows how worthwhile your efforts have been. Thanks for the fantastic work.
Krosp of “Girl Genius” might give Chessie a run for his money, but yes, I like it, too.
I am a cat person. With cats, if you are friendly to them, they are usually friendly to you, but they do not suck up. I got punched by a cat once when I was pushing my luck with holding her. BAM! Right in the kisser. I deserved that one.
One thing that caught my eye in the above text was the mention of Emma’s and Elaine’s dad; we didn’t hear very much about him so far (if at all). So he’s working abroad? Or was this changed later on as well?
He’s still away on a business trip. Elaine mentions it in Chapter 3 when Ben asks her about calling him to tell him about Emma.
I think it was a great idea to put Calliope, Jack and the others, as well as Alice, Karen, and everything in the first chapter. With so many storylines you have the reader trapped from the very beginning. Really, the organisation of the storyline is brilliant. I’ve always thought this webcomic was one of the ones with a more intriguing plot – and I read quite a few, all of them really good.
I admire the mastery with which you have finally rendered the storytelling. Seriously, my writer (and best friend) and I are currently (and since a long time ago) going through some similar problems to the ones you faced try and write the script of a comic with also a really complicated plot. I know how it feels, the story is good but the way of telling it doesn’t seem to work -.- I’m going to try and learn from your work in Namesake, I hope it works out as good as yours! :3
Excuse me if my English is not very good in this post, my brain doesn’t seem to be able to deal with this language today, for some reason -.- I hope it doesn’t decide to go on ‘English-language’ strike during tomorrow’s Interpreting exam, too…
So Emma WILL come back from Oz?
I really love the bottom sketch with little Emma and Cheshire Cat. I wouldn’t mind buying a poster of that finish. Also I wish I had been able to buy the comic when it was being promoted OTL. The story is just so very well written.
You can still buy the book! It’s in our store.
I really love the first panel. I think it’s because of her expression