The Harbinger’s Path: Chapter 1 is Live! | May 12, 2025

Digital Art
Posted on
Preview of page 3 from "The Harbinger's Path," showing an establishing shot of the Maguuma Jungle in a painterly comic style.
“The Harbinger’s Path” | Page 3 preview crop (establishing shot)

The Harbinger’s Path officially launched today! :D

The entire first chapter can be read here.

Here’s the description from the site:

Pact Marshal Trahearne spent 43 days captured by the Elder Dragon Mordremoth. What happened to the Firstborn during this time?

 

Trahearne & Malyck fan comic set during the Heart of Thorns era of Guild Wars 2.

 

Rated PG-13

The main thing I learned from this launch is I need to schedule more buffer time than I think I will need, to account for unforeseen occurrences, haha. I had planned to take care of the majority of the comic over the weekend, and intended to upload the pages early this morning. I had plans which I didn’t allocate enough time for, such that I lost about a day’s time. I managed to have the comic live at 2 pm PT, and started posting them to socials/RSS/email after around 2:45 pm or so. I was hoping originally to post them at around 8-9 am PT, which is what I’ll aim for in the future if I do another bulk chapter like this.

I received a few messages throughout the morning from people anticipating the comic’s launch, and I feel bad I kept you waiting. D: I hope the wait will be worth it, and I may even have a chance to do a few touch-ups tonight before you perhaps see it when you awake next morning … though from what I’ve gathered through the years, excessive revisions for the first chapter of a comic can be a potential pitfall, haha. Maybe I should make a personal rule to not revise chapter 1 until I finish chapter 2. But I will probably end up revising a few small things before then. :p

I was still touching up pages this morning! In my defense, I think adhering to a launch date personally helps me a great deal. The reason I was still touching-up pages was because I didn’t notice many things until it became closer and closer to the launch. Suddenly, the realization of, “Oh man! People will actually see this! I can’t show it in this state!” And that happened even to pages which I had previously checked off as “finished” last week. Funny how that is – it’s probably some mental trickery. But I think the pages turn out better for it, than if I had allowed myself infinite time to work on them. They probably would never have been completed if I had done that, haha – more for that pile of WIP’s we all seem to have.

The PDF

The main thing I have remaining for the first chapter is the digital PDF I wanted to put together. In the end, my ambitions to complete the PDF to coincide with launch day proved a bit lofty, haha. I think I might have struggled to finish it even if I had not had less time this weekend than I was intending. On the bright side, with the extra time (my new ETA is for this Friday, May 16), I’m hopeful I can perhaps add some flourishes I wouldn’t have had time for had I posted it today.

At the very least, it should be a bit neater than if I had tried to fit it in for today.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 is also well under way! I have the layouts done, and have started refining. I’ve found that layouts of initial refinement are some of my favorite steps of the process – I have layouts for a lot of ideas, some Guild Wars, some with original stories with my characters – it’s so fun to note down these ideas in sketch form.

Anyway, I’m going to list Chapter 1 launch day updates below – mainly for myself, to have a record for the things I had to fix, haha – and then have some longer thoughts/likely rambling in the full post afterward.

Updates: May 12, 2025

  • Fixed a bug with the cover page’s mobile layout displaying incorrectly.
  • Fixed a broken link on the cover page’s “next” link.
  • Fixed the footer formatting on comic pages.
  • Added source links for “The Nightmare Harbinger” on pages 1 and 2.
  • Fixed the background image for “The Harbinger’s Path” index page displaying in an unintended way.
  • Slightly updated the art for page 3 (the establishing shot).

Add-on Updates: May 13, 2025

  • Slight adjustments and touch-ups to pages 9-10
    • Primarily word balloons, slight art updates
  • Updated art for page 8
    • Turned on some layers I didn’t realize were off!
    • Cleaned up art in panel 3

Comic Launch

Continue Reading

The Harbinger’s Path: PDF “Process” Preview | May 9, 2025

Digital Art, Guild Wars 2, Work-In-Progress
Posted on
Photograph showing an in-progress layout page for a digital PDF version of Chapter 1 from "The Harbinger's Path"
“The Harbinger’s Path” Chapter 1 Digital PDF | Photo from an in-process layout page

One of the things I was hoping to do ahead of the my self-imposed May 12th Chapter 1 launch date, in addition to the chapter itself, was put together a little digital, web-resolution PDF of it to accompany its launch. Then, I had the thought that it might be fun to include some bonus art in it – either process images, as I do like some of the lineart I did for this chapter, which is easier to see before colors were added. I’m also considering adding some preview images for Chapter 2, which will likely be layout art (very sketchy).

I did a quick draft of the PDF to see how it would look, and I should be able to have it organized by Monday at the same time the chapter is posted. Though, when I was looking through my process files to see what I’d like to add for these extras, I kept thinking of more ideas. I’m thinking it might be nice to add some little notes to some of the artwork – one in particular is one of the earlier pages, which is the one that caused this whole project to snowball into an actual short comic instead of a few one-off pages. I’ll have to look into it more – this weekend. Wish me luck!

Continue Reading

Dagonet and Malyck Portraits | May 8, 2025

Digital Art, Guild Wars 2
Posted on

I’ve been wanting to do a series of “portrait-style” paintings for some of my favorite sylvari characters – the first one I’ve finished so far is Dagonet (from last October), and I’ve shown WIP’s of Riannoc and Cadeyrn in places before. Riannoc has been very close to being finished for a while, and I also have one secret character I don’t think I’ve mentioned anywhere yet, who’s been in a near-finished state for good while too. Only need to do that last 10-5% of polish – which I’ve found tend to takes me more time than I estimate, but which often results in the most stark features for whether I’m satisfied or dissatisfied for how a painting turns out.

Cadeyrn is in a more incomplete state, though I don’t think he’d take me significantly longer than Riannoc and the secret character (one of my favorites, and I don’t think I’ve drawn the character before now).

I should probably standardize the nameplate design, though I sort of like Malyck’s placement more than Dagonet’s. Issue to solve in the future! 

I mainly wanted to see how Dagonet and Malyck look side-by-side so far. :D especially as I haven’t posted the Dagonet painting on this sketchblog since it was from last October.

Oh! I should post the process for it, too – I’ll post them below:

And, let’s post a detail crop below:

Detail close-up of Dagonet
Detail close-up of Dagonet

Why are sylvari so fun to paint? I never tire of them!

“Harbinger Malyck” Paintover | May 7, 2025

Digital Art, Guild Wars 2
Posted on
Illustrative painting of the sylvari Malyck from Guild Wars 2. He stands in the center of the painting as thorned vines twist around him. The background evokes Verdant Brink, the starting zone from the Heart of Thorns expansion.
“The Nightmare Harbinger” or “Harbinger Malyck” | 2025 updated version (WIP)

I’ve been putting the final adjustments for the first chapter of The Harbinger’s Path, and thought it would be fun to show two past paintings of Trahearne and Malyck which were early representations for what has developed into this comic project. Only, when I saw the Malyck painting again, all I could notice were all the errors I wanted to fix!

I ended up spending some time yesterday doing a paintover of it – for fun, but also for practice. At the time it was painted (all the way back in 2018), I could see there were errors – which I had tried to fix, but not entirely successfully. It ended up being very satisfying painting over it, as I could now do many of the things I aspired to do at the time, but which were out of grasp for my skill level (though the current version is not perfect by any means – but hopefully mostly presentable in its current state, haha).

I also realized there were several things about Malyck’s design which I didn’t draw accurately back then – mainly his leather gauntlets and additional belt straps (though by far not limited to only those). I could not believe I forgot his additional belt straps, because nowadays, those are some of my favorite aspects of his design to draw!

Above are the current and original versions, for comparison. I still think the overall concept for the 2018 painting was solid, but the intended pose I was going for was more complex than what my skill level was capable of back then.

The raw file for this updated version is very messy in its full resolution, which is why I don’t consider it finished yet (and in the version without the additional color washes, you can plainly see the unfinished, rough areas). Until then, hopefully its current state is  again mostly presentable!

And here it is as the pair of paintings I intended to post yesterday (now with this updated version of the Malyck painting).

The Trahearne painting is even older, from 2016. There are definitely parts of the anatomy I would do differently now, but I think compared to the 2018 version of the Malyck painting, this worked much better because of the decorative aspect of the sylvari design (I’m perpetually in awe of Kristen Perry’s design direction for concepting them – if you’ve never seen her documentation for GW2’s sylvari redesign, go check it out now – you’re in for a treat!) (I’m also so happy her site is up now! And that we can still view her design documents easily today. There’s so much to learn from admiring her design sensibilities!).

The Harbinger’s Path Launch Date (and extra odds and ends)

Launch Date: May 12

I should also probably mention somewhere on this sketchblog that the comic is slated to launch next Monday, May 12th! I also want to put together some fun extras, mainly a PDF of the first chapter which will be free to download. With how unreliable social media has become, I’ve also been meaning to set up a mailing list of some sort for a long while (there’s a link on my portfolio site, and at the bottom of the this blog’s homepage, but I never ended up sharing it anywhere else yet) – I’m planning to offer the PDF of the first chapter as a little bonus for joining the mailing list.

Chapter 1 PDF Extras

It’ll have some bonus art in it, either things like some of my favorite lineart drawings from the first chapter (before colors were added), and/or preview layout drafts from the next chapter(s) (I have up to chapter 3 drafted, but I’ll probably limit this to chapter 2 previews).

One of the reasons I didn’t end up sharing the mailing list when I first set it up, is because I didn’t know yet how I wanted to use it. I’ve had time to ponder it for a while now, and my current thought is I might segment the mailing list into different interests – but probably not too many, as that sounds like it might become complicated for me to manage. More thoughts about this in the full post if you, for some reason, wish to read my thinking aloud to myself, haha:

Continue Reading

Copyright © 2025 Liz Liu. All rights reserved.