I got two pieces of fan art over the weekend. 😀 First is from Elina:
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And next is a piece by ShiyoPanthera:
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Thank you very much Elina and ShiyoPanthera!
Today's edition of the Secret Commentary is empty, because Dave failed to come up with something for it.
Aww… Selkie looks so sad in that last panel. Awesome job, man.
I like the intermixed plotlines. Very nice. And you definitely captured the little kid character. I’ve had a similar conversation with my daughter, and it went just about the same way. 🙂
Meanwhile… the director commentary is only giving me half the comment. I’m guessing it’s something to do with shading but that’s because I can’t think of anything else gradient-based.
Aaaahh I forgot I can’t use quotation marks or the commentary goes loopy. >_< thanks for pointing it out.
@Danzier
That’s cause that’s all that was added for the commentary. Checked the html source to confirm. :p
Nice story so far, been watching this web comic for a while now. Keep up the good work!
Don’t be sad, Selkie, you make the rest of us all sad too! :'(
love the plot line. Makes me wish I could just keep myself from reading until there’s a whole chapter’s worth to read at once but I can’t help it! I’m a selkie junkie!
keep up the good work and let us know when you have a book version bound and ready for sale.
Getting into the meat of the storyline, yay! Not that I don’t enjoy the playing around with the situation at all, but I do have a ton of curiosity and ideas about origins and mechanics and stuff.
Ah… the pieces of the puzzle are starting to come together.
Nice Fan art! Also, instead of English, did Selkie’s mom speak… whatever language Selkie’s been shown to speak?
Yes indeed.
Interesting. Selkie’s mother (or whatever the relationship was) knew enough about human culture to leave her in a relatively safe place. Well-done bit of back story.
It works well to give more depth. Glad you kept it subtle 😀
I bet Selkie’s mom left that clip with her.
T_T Made me sad to read this, but it was good.
I like the new gradients in the background. They contribute to the “Feel” of the comic very nicely.
Also, if Selkie’s “mother” didn’t speak English how do they even know for certain it was her mother?
It’s a reasonable assumption. Suppose you were running an orphanage in an exclusively white-populated city (let’s just roll with the example, I’m not trying to be racist), and a black female dropped off a black child for care. Your first conclusion would be that they were related, probably closely.
You bring up a good point, though…whoever dropped Selkie off isn’t guaranteed to be her mother.
I’d bet money on whoever dropped off Selkie being her mother … both non-human, and probably the only ones they’ve ever seen at the orphanage.
Though it does suddenly occur to me that some other female of the same species (whether a relative or friend or whatever) might have dropped Selkie off at the orphanage after something had happened to her biological parents.
Poor Selkie.
Ok, I’ve officially been reading this comic way much. I went to bed last night after eating some seafood and had a dream that I was turning into a Selkie. I freaked out a little and then my gills started to dry out and when I tried to flush them out I woke up choking on water from my water bottle. lol, was kinda cool though.
Oh! Poor little girl. 🙁 The look on Selkie’s face. Got me teary eyed. Luckily Todd loves her so much and Grandma and Grandpa too. I love your way of dealing with such difficult emotional themes in your story. Very good! We loves yous Selkie. 🙂
I’m loving this so far!
The older Selkie fanart is rather nice. It’s interesting to imagine what she’ll look like when she gets older.
Excellent use of the graded backgrounds! It worked especially well on the stairs. Though it didn’t work quite as well in panels 4 and 6 – especially in 6, with the extreme close-up of Selkie’s face, the background shading just seemed to me to throw the panel off balance a little – not bad, just not quite right. I can’t explain it any better though.
Excellent fan art Elina and ShiyoPanthera. Selkie looks better in red than I would’ve expected with the blue skin. And ShiyoPanthera’s teen Selkie has retained her cuteness – not quite so rebellious looking.
Now, about who dropped her off. A question occurs to me that could relate to the topic; Dave, can Selkie’s species interbreed with humans? If so, then that could help explain the situation?
Interesting take on the situation. But no, interbreeding is not possible.
Just a thought on the language-barrier mystery: Todd says Selkie’s mom didn’t speak English when she was dropped off…but what if Selkie did? I could easily see Selkie as bilingual from a young age and I imagine a 5 year old Selkie crying “Mommy!” would clue the caretakers in pretty quickly to the identity of the adult.
Speaking of Selkie not knowing what to call herself, I get the feeling “nei li” was an answer when Todd asked herself that earlier – but the poor kid’s so unsure of herself she retracted her answer when Todd pushed her on it. This assumption could have unfortunate consequences, similar to how Terry Pratchett explains that many geographical features are named such things as “a mountain, you idiot” when translated into the local language.
Explorer: “You there, native, what’s that over there?”
Native: “It’s a mountain, dummy.” (Translated for convenience)
Explorer: “Ah, a wonderful name! Such a rich culture you savages have.”
To say normally I do not like storys like this would be an under statement, but the mystery part kept me reading. I have to say, for such a wierd idea it’s amused me more then I thought it could have. And props to you for such drawing progression so quickly. 😉
In the first panel, it looks like Theo has a white moustache. 🙂