Quick pose study of the pistol animation for the “Harbinger” elite spec from Guild Wars 2 (not to be confused with Malyck being the “Nightmare Harbinger,” or with “The Harbinger’s Path” comic) (I always thought it was an amusing decision they decided to name the elite with the same term. Such teases!).
I remember when I first tried out the Harbinger spec on my reaper, I really enjoyed watching the animation for the pistol’s attack animation. I thought the posing done by the riggers/animators was fantastic, and I couldn’t resist doing a little study from the in-game pose.
Unrelated to the above sketch – I’m not sure how this happened, but I might be formatting 2 comics for print this month/into next month. I’ll have more info next week, most likely. (It’s small, nothing major.)
Spent some hours last night seeing how much I could add to this small animation practice!
I did the early draft for this one at the end of January. I had a vague notion of potentially finishing it for Valentine’s Day for fun, but before I knew it, the day was upon us! Yesterday became practice to see how much I could add, or how presentable I could make it, by today.
The version all the way at the end of this post is how the file looked when I opened it yesterday. I wasn’t sure whether I’d add color – I could have spent much more time on the lines – but I learned a lot in this one from how I added the color this time.
Lines only.
I have to confess I’ve always not understood cell-shading well. But I am quickly growing an appreciation for it after trying it out here.
Early “keyframe” draft.
One thing I noticed recently is there’s a “messy” stage when going from the early “keyframe” draft to adding the in-between “breakdown” frames (below). It’s a bit counterintuitive for me, because when adding the breakdown frames, it almost looks like the animation is reversing its progress – at the same time, I can start to see more of how the final motion might look. And seeing that potential is what makes adding these breakdown frames so invigorating to draw!
Version when I opened the file yesterday, where I had started adding the “breakdown” frames.
I enjoyed season 2, episode 10 of the “Hannibal” tv show for all the wrong reasons, but it’s been a refreshing reminder for how much I love dark fantasies, haha. I knew I’d have to do a small drawing of them at some point.
This is from memory (another drawing from imagination practice), so I don’t expect the likeness to be precise – though I was thinking of the actors’ portrayals (Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelson). My hope is it conveys the “feeling” of their characters, even if the likeness isn’t precise. I’ve been really enjoying the actors’ performances, especially during season 2. This show has been a delightful, slow-burn for me – I almost didn’t continue it after the first initial episodes in season 1 – but the show really rewards you during the second season for sticking with it. I’m very glad I’m finally getting around to watching it after so long!
I’m still within season 2 (I think just finished episode 12 the other day). This show has been sort of fascinating me for how much it was able to get away with. I can’t believe it was a network television show. I question whether they would be able to shoot this show today.
I’m really glad it exists. I learned afterward that this show was cancelled in its third season for poor ratings, and even though I love it, I can understand why – it is so niche and unapologetic in its show creators’ interests. I really admire and respect this level of dedication to staying true to their vision. It almost feels more like an art house or indie production than a network show.
Slightly wider cropping.
It’s giving me much to ponder about the type of art I want to do and express.
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.
Lineart sketch.Still of the drawing, without glow. I just liked how this version looked.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.
Super rough Cadeyrn warm-up! I’ve been wanting to sketch the ending portion of Ree Soesbee’s “Dream and Nightmare” passages, particularly the final one describing Cadeyrn after he’s founded the Nightmare Court. The specific portion reads:
Cadeyrn lounged on his throne with a careless, prideful slouch. A crown of golden vine glittered on his forehead as courtiers bowed and whispered before him, hanging on Cadeyrn’s every word, their eyes as lightless as the space between the stars.
I love the imagery this passage depicts, and it’s been on my task list for a while to try sketching some ideas based off it. This is my second (very loose) attempt. Below is the full, uncropped (and very rough) composition:
Cadeyrn warm-up (Full composition)
I thought it might also be fun to play a little with Cadeyrn’s design, namely his outfit. I’m not a huge fan of his in-game armor, but I wanted to try something that is still recognizable as having that as its inspiration (for comparison, this is Cadeyrn’s in-game appearance). I really like how in the Nightmare Court outfit series of armor, there’s a mild sense of lasciviousness, or this air of seduction, which works thematically with their concept of corrupting (or “seducing”) Dream sylvari to Nightmare.
I also thought it didn’t quite make sense that Faolain (the canonical leader of the Nightmare Court) wears Nightmare Court armor, while its founder wears low-level sylvari cultural armor. From the Grove, no less! This never made sense to me, given how arrogant Cadeyrn is depicting in Ree Soesbee’s writings. (I imagine he might likely have disdain for anything associated with the Grove.) But I do love when concepts are created based off in-game appearances – it’s why often, my favorite games to do fan art for tend toward those with lesser graphics. Because these allow more freedom with how artists can imagine their depictions, and allow more creativity and play among different interpretations across a variety of people.
That’s the idea behind his alternations here – I tried combining features from the sylvari male version of the Nightmare Court light armor (as Cadeyrn is a mesmer) – mainly by opening the chest, and changing his collar armor to thorns instead of leaves – while attempting to keep the “spirit” of his in-game appearance intact.
Incidentally, the first sketch I tried was from two days ago, sketched as an even looser warm-up:
Loose sketch showing Cadeyrn toying with his “crown of glittering vine.”
There are aspects of this sketch I also like. I’m not sure which version I’ll take further – it might be neither, maybe I’ll try a few more ideas! – but it was fun to finally sketch down some potential tries for this idea.
Finally, the first sketch is also part of one of the “sketchpages” I use for warm-ups – this is how the full page looks:
Loose sketches | Left, Cadeyrn from Guild Wars 2; Right, Corveil, from my own setting (not GW2)
This page started as as warm-up with Corveil first, on the right, as some anatomy construction practice.
