From and upcoming page.

It is pretty.



 

I feel a strong need to share Linnea Holmström Ljung's rather wonderful Namesake fanart. Behold!



Tumblr (bigger) version can be found here.

It seems Linnea is a fan of the little fairies I drew for a Patreon reward... and of a certain pairing.



 

I commissioned Mildred to draw pretty pretty costumes for my Sparkgobbler characters. I’ve been re-poking this story lately. It’s still so dear to me. I’m thinking of starting up on it soon, depending on how busy I am.

Sparkgobbler is a retelling of Cinderella with evil shadows, headless horsemen, a girl who floats and a boy who eats light. Adventure and pretty balls await.

Just (FINALLY) saw Guardians of the Galaxy (been wanting to for weeks but work/anthology/comic stuff made it impossible). It was awesome. Also I have a mighty need to draw Warrick and Emma as Gamora and Quill.

Hey folks! Isa and I decided to take the plunge and started a Patreon!

Patreon is kind of like a hybrid between a tip jar and Kickstarter. What it does is help you to support the artists you love and enable them to do more work. In our case, we would love to eventually get Namesake up to five days a week. However, to do that, we need to be able to have Isa work full-time (or clone her, but we’re still figuring out the process.)

Anyone who donates can access our creation and activity feeds. This will include a variety of behind-the-scenes content, including videos of us working on various aspects of the comic, the research that goes into creating Namesake and our other comics, Q&As, book/comic critiques, first read on our new projects, previews and more. Those who pledge $10 $5 or more per month will get early access to Namesake updates!

Those who contribute at any level will also get access to development work going on with Quibbling, our second major comic series that’s slated to debut this winter.

We’re really excited about this, and we’re thrilled about the chance to share more of our stories with you!

CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT THE PATREON PAGE

 

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The Namesake team has been hard at work : we’ve been secretly plotting to launch an anthology Kickstarter in August. and THIS is the first official announcement!

Introducing Valor - a fairy tale anthology about courageous heroines producedby a team of amazing fairy-tale loving creators!

Valor is an anthology of re-imaged fairy tales showcasing the talent of some of the top creators in the field of digital comics. The purpose of this book is to pay homage to the strength, resourcefulness, and cunning of female heroines in fairy tales. Some of these are recreations of time-honored tales. Others are brand new stories, designed to be passed to future generations.

The anthology will be young adult friendly and in color, each story being 4 to 15 pages long.

WHO IS THE TALENT :

+ Morgan Beem - Ink Wielder Extraordinaire

+ Meaghan Carter - Creator of Take Off

+ Kadi Fedoruk - Creator of Blindsprings

+ Megan Kearney - Creator of the Beauty and the Beast

+ Isabelle Melançon - Co-creator of Namesake

+ Laura Neubert - Lover of all things revolutionnary

+ Emily Hann - Composer of backgrounds

+ Sara Goetter - Creator of the short comic Haircut

+ Annie Stoll - Creator of Ode

+ Michelle Krivanek - Creator of Alice and the Nightmare

+ Nicole Chartrand - Creator of Feywinds

+ Jayd Ait-Kaci - Creator of Small Town Witch

+ Justin Lanjil - Master of colors

+ Ran Brown - Creator of The End

+ Angelica Maria Lopez - Creator of Solstoria

We also have an amazing writing team working with some of the artists and writing prose :

+ Megan Lavey-Heaton - Co-creator of Namesake

+ Tim Ferrera - Writer of Ode

+ Alex Singer - Author of Sfeer Theory

+ Joanne Webster - Forger of words

OK SO I NEED THIS. WHEN IS THE KICKSTARTER?

Launch is scheduled for August 1st. There will be a HUGE announcement on the site, of course.

Hi folks!

I wanted to give a gentle reminder to our amazing fans: anyone is allowed to ship whoever they want in the comic, whether or not canon says differently. We have canon pairings, but if you disagree with us and want to play with your own, that's perfectly fine and encouraged. Squee, do fanart, write fanfic, create elaborate spaghetti art. Creativity and joy in your ship and in the story is an awesome thing.

However, please, please do not berate people who have different ships from your own. Do not talk down to them, do not threaten them, do not tell them they are wrong in not shipping your ship. It is fine to disagree and to discuss why you agree or disagree with a particular pairing, but do so civilly. Remember that there is a person on the other end of the computer screen, and they have feelings too. Just because you're viewing pixels and not seeing them face-to-face doesn't give you the right to troll or harass them for their choices.

Have fun and play nice, everyone. Please. We will be deleting the comments of those that don't. Thank you!

In case anyone is interested, I did a short story for the wonderful comic “Princeless" (which is all about girls saving other girls from fairy tale tropes). It was really fun to draw, has weird vampires, POC princesses and armor that doesn't suck. Plus, full color pages by me. Be sure to check it out!

Alice, the Queen of hearts and Finlay for the upcoming Wonderland segment. (Click for larger)

Just wanted to share the new ad designs I whipped up! (Click image for bigger version)

While hunting to double-check a reference for a future page, I ran across a Calliope aside from April 2011, when we were still in book 1 and Calliope wasn't been seen a lot:

Alice: "I haven't done anything for FOUR MONTHS." ARE WE EVEN MAIN CHARACTERS ANYMORE?????
Jack: Awww, Al, it's not that bad.
Alice: Say you. It's only been two months since we've seen you!
Jack: You know what they say, baby. I drive up the page views. *wink*
Wendy: ALICE. Remember, Jason said no decapitating Jack with the vorpal sword … again.
Alice: Last time didn't count! It was a clone!
Lemuel: Well, not so much a clone, but a Jack animatronic that I cobbled together. Sure looked realistic, huh?
Jack: I was impressed that you made it anatomically correct … and I'm never going to share a gym locker with you again.
Alice: *fume*

For those who need a memory jolt, Jason is the current head of Calliope. Alice referred to Lemuel back in chapter 2. His Arsenal jersey is still endangered.

I also found one of the earlier drafts of chapter 1. Isa ordered me to burn it. How can you burn Gmail? Oh well! FIRE. *skips off*

Note: My husband glanced over as I typed that last sentence and went, "Well, that's not worrying at all."

Thank you to all the grammar gurus who commented on "had" vs. "have" in today's page. It's the one area of the English language I really, really struggle with after all this time. My linguistic Achilles heel. One quick favor, if you see an error on a page, please double-check the comments to see if someone else has pointed out the issue. Isa and I are quick to see the comments, but there are times when we can't always fix a page fast or reply to the comment. But, we do see them all, and we do make the fixes. Thank you! <3

(Note: How do you know which one to use anyhow? Google didn't help there.)

I noticed I post a lot of my Namesake work on other social media but rarely here. I'm going to make an effort to post more of my art here.

Designing super complex costumes i’m never gonna use.

That’s probably a lie.

(Inspired by Epic)

So, the site is all re-done. How about that? Wacky!

I did this drawing this week to celebrate the website redesign. We put it at the beginning of the archive, as a welcome mat to new readers. It’s a really badass welcome mat. I wanted to do something featuring the three main characters of Namesake (because yeah, despite the zillion characters, these three are our heroes).

Prints of this illustration are available in our store, of course!

Tumblr version (Larger image)