Nightmare Court Necromancer Sketches | January 31, 2026

Animation, Digital Art, Guild Wars 2, Sketches & Studies
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Drawing two hairstyles from the in-game options to figure out which look might fit the character (Animated).

I’ve been idly wanting to figure out a look for a new Nightmare Court necromancer character I’ve been thinking about recently. He’s in the same setting as “Nightmare’s Embrace,” but isn’t a major character (he likely won’t feature in the mini-comic later this year). Different from my existing sylvari characters, the idea for him arose from a short story I was writing, instead from one of my existing in-game characters. My other sylvari characters originated from their in-game versions first, with their personalities developing afterward. Oftentimes, influenced by the experience playing them in-game. 

I haven’t made a new GW2 character in a long time, and thought this was the perfect excuse to create a new one. I played around with the in-game style options the other day, and thought drawing them might help me decide on this character’s look. I think the color scheme is close – especially for the hair and glow color – but I’m not entirely satisfied on his hairstyle. The two here are the closest I was partial to for him, but I’m leaning toward sketching a few ideas at a later point not based on an in-game style, to see if I can figure out a look that fits him more closely. 

Line drawing of a sylvari showing two hairstyles from the game. Left shows a short hairstyle with broad leaves. Right shows a long hairstyle with numerous small leaves.
Lineart sketch.
Same drawing as before, only the right shows the lineart sketch, while the left shows the color sketch.
I just liked how this version looked.
Animated gif showing the pulsing glow of a sylvari with long hair. The glow is warm orange, his hair a dusky, reddish-violet.
Animated version of the hairstyle on the right.

I also tried out animating the glow color to see if it would help me decide on whether I liked either of these hairstyles for the character. Between these two, the one on the right fits him slightly better, and I think it turned out better when animated.

But doing this helped me decide I don’t think I will be satisfied with either hairstyle for him. 

Still of the animated version from the top of this post.
Still of the animated version from the top of this post.

The Harbinger’s Path at Manga Ichiba this Fanime 2026

Comics, Guild Wars 2
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Happy New Year! I hope your year is starting off well. 

I have exciting news! Earlier this month, I learned I was accepted into Manga Ichiba at Fanime this year, the first-ever doujinshi-focused (“indie fan comics”) event for NA.

I applied with The Harbinger’s Path, and I’m pleased to announce I will be self-publishing a very limited print run of my “Trahearne-Malyck doujinshi” comic for this event. It will include all 3 completed chapters (50+ pages), and I hope to also add some bonus material for this print version. (More about this to come.)

If you’d like to learn more, I’ll be sharing more info through email updates. You can receive them by joining here.

Below is an overview:

What is Manga Ichiba?

This is an event officially affiliated with FanimeCon, specifically designed to encourage NA-made indie fan comics (or “doujinshi”). 

Fanime’s official description:

“A brand new event is coming to FanimeCon this year! Manga Ichiba is America’s first original English-language doujinshi market.”

More info on their official page here.

Fanime is one of North America’s largest anime conventions – I remember first hearing about it from the artists I followed tabling at it. I was able to visit for the first time a few years ago as an attendee! They have a plethora of events going on, and I had a wonderful time with people I met there. It takes place during May in Northern California for a few days over a weekend. 

How is this different from an Artist Alley? 

One reason I’m excited about this event is because it aims to be distinct from Fanime’s existing “Artist Alleys.” Today’s Artist Alleys – in general, not only at Fanime – tend to focus primarily on selling commercially. These is nothing wrong with this, but commercial incentivizes tend to push artists toward selling prints and merchandise over doujinshi comics. Doujinshi both take more time to make, and tend to have smaller potential audiences. 

Doujinshi has a well-established community in Japan, while this type of community hasn’t historically been as nurtured for NA-made doujin comics. Manga Ichiba hopes this might begin changing this! 

Manga Ichiba aims to cultivate more of a doujinshi community in NA by shifting the focus less on commercial selling, and more on encouraging artists who are creating doujinshi comics primarily out of their love for their fandoms. 

What is “Doujinshi?” 

You might have seen me refer to “The Harbinger’s Path” as my “Trahearne-Malyck doujinshi” in places since starting this project. Doujinshi is a Japanese term which refers to self-published comics, especially fan comics (but it can also refer to original works).

I have always thought of The Harbinger’s Path this way, but I wasn’t sure how widely-known this term was to western/GW2 audiences. I started also calling it my “fan comic,” in case this was more clear.

Final Note

Quick reminder that this project is entirely fan-made and unofficial, and not sponsored by ArenaNet. If you are affiliated with ArenaNet and have questions or suggestions about The Harbinger’s Path, you are always welcome to reach out!

“Out of the Dream” Fingerstyle Guitar Cover | January 15, 2026

Music
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I’ve been meaning to try my hand at attempting a simple arrangement of “Out of the Dream” from Guild Wars 2, which is one of my favorite melodies from the game. 

Sat down to give it a go this afternoon when I needed to give my eyes a break, and came up with this so far. It’s very satisfying to play! 

Tuning : Standard 9 Capo

Edit: I figured out the correct key! It’s around the 13th fret. And oddly, I can play it with open strings without a capo! Which is fortuitous, because my capo does not fit around this part of the guitar, haha. 

“Out of the Dream” fingerstyle guitar cover (very roughly) arranged & played by Landylachs

Original track composed by Jeremy Soule for Guild Wars 2

Video Edited with Kdenlive v23.04.1

Warband Commission | January 7, 2026

Commission Process, Commissions, Digital Art, Guild Wars 2
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Illustration of a charr warband sitting around a tea table in the Red Duck Teahouse in Cantha. There is a festive Wintersday atmosphere. I can finally show this commission! :D 

I wanted to also show a few detail close-ups; I’ll update this post at a later point, when I have time to crop and export those! 

For now, two three WIP process pages are below. Some text is omitted, as aside from Achyrd, the rest of the characters for this one wish to remain anonymous! 

“Wintersday Warband” | Initial sketches.

 

“Wintersday Warband” | Sketch Revisions + Color Tests
“Wintersday Warband” | Outfit Block-in + Wintersday Accessories

January 15, 2026

  • Added a third WIP process image! (Initial Sketches; “.01”) 

Site Updates | January 10, 2026

Site Updates
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I’ve been meaning to update The Harbinger Path index page with a banner header for a while, and finally had a chance to today! 

I mainly wanted to change it because I always thought the full cover wrap-around looked a bit clunky in this screen format (my mind envisioned it as a wallpaper or book cover). The banner version also frees up some of the vertical space, to show the chapters and pages closer to the top. 

I also wanted to document the change here. Below is the original version: 

You might also notice I added the “doujinshi” description to the subheading – this will be relevant in a future post I plan to make soon. :p 

Other small changes are I added the January 19th date underneath the top updates, and changed the sidebar “Comic Projects” description to “Comics & Illustration.” The site will still mainly be for comic projects, I’m mainly trying this out since I did end up using the “Landylachs” watermark for my personal art last year, even for illustrations.

As always, this is all a work in progress, and we’ll iterate as we go! 

Edit: I also wanted to document the changes for mobile! 

I unfortunately didn’t take a screencap of the previous version on mobile, but I did find this screenshot I saved from the version I had during the comic’s pre-launch. But, I think the main thing you can see is that the pages should hopefully now show to the user at first glance when browsing on mobile. While before, the user might have had to scroll down before the page numbers became visible. 

Subsequent updates in the full post: 

January 11, 2026

  • Added custom headers for desktop and mobile view (I remembered I could do this!).
    • The header text is larger on mobile for increased legibility, while the desktop header has slightly more text, and shows more of the cover art. 
  • Updated the desktop image in this post to the current live version. 
Copyright © 2026 Liz Liu. All rights reserved.