One more panel preview! I’d say Chapter 2 is a little less than half-finished now. I might update this post again later today with more progress. I’ve kept much of the process saved in the files, but I’m finding it smoother to continue progressing the pages and sorting through what to share later on. I know I said this for Chapter 1, but I’m really excited to finish Chapter 2 so I can start working on Chapter 3, haha. Chapter 3 has some of my favorite scenes in the whole project.
Wanted to post a few panel previews from the current stage of Chapter 2! I have the majority of chapter 2 blocked out now – what feels like the bulk of the work for me. Progress is going smoothly, more than chapter 1, as I’ve been able to apply everything I learned from doing chapter 1 to chapter 2. Chapter 1 had sort of a haphazard workflow, because I didn’t really know what I was doing – the way I drew the pages was very inefficient. But necessary, I think, for figuring out a workflow that works for me and feels natural. I estimate new pages should be ready later this month.
Above and below are color tests from yesterday. Below was the initial color test. I liked the contrast of the warm colors, but comparing it with the cooler version (above), I thought the color version was a better fit for this page’s tone and dialogue.
I’m using a different method for coloring this chapter’s pages, which I tried on some practice pages for a different project alongside doing The Harbinger’s Path first chapter (Nightmare’s Embrace – a short side-comic about my personal sylvari characters, which I haven’t shown anywhere yet). I really like how the colors for those pages are turning out – they give me a little more control compared to the workflow I used in Chapter 1.
This is a panel early in Chapter 2 I like – the composition for this preview is the full panel.
Close-up of the previous panel.
The workflow I’m using right now is loosely: Layout >> Block-out >> Color or Refinements (order is interchangeable) >> Final Refinements
Layout = Very loose, messy sketches. Likely only understandable to me because they are incredibly loose (maybe I’ll post examples in the future, though they aren’t anything to look at because they likely won’t be very readable)
Block-out = Changing the loose layout sketches into readable forms and shapes. The color tests above are the block-out stage with very loose color just added, while the panel below is a little before I’d consider a block-out “complete,” because the shapes for Trahearne’s hair are not fully defined/decided on yet. But I also sometimes leave this to the “refinements” step, when they are smaller details like these, and if I think they will not take me too long to figure out during refining.
Color = Initial colors.
Refinements = Refining the block-out lines, as well as any color changes. Maybe this should be two steps, but I’ve been thinking of them as a combined step.
Final Refinements = Fix anything I’m dissatisfied with in the page at this stage. This is arguably the most important step, in some ways – Harbinger Chapter 1 hovered in the “Refinements” stage for a long time. It was “mostly presentable,” but there were many things on all the pages I saw I wanted to fix or improve. It wasn’t until doing a second “refinements” pass that the pages began to look more finished to me. They’re small changes, but ones that make an impact disproportional to what I’d expect (at least, it was surprising to me how much adding this step improved all the pages for chapter 1).
Above is just a personal favorite of mine – I really like how Trahearne’s expression is turning out. Doing these pages is forcing me to learn a lot of things about line weight which (to my detriment) I’ve never had a strong interest practicing with very much before, but which has become endlessly interesting to me for some reason this year.
Update: May 22, 2025
I think I figured out what I found displeasing about the original “finished” version of this drawing (the version right below this text), and why I preferred the earlier sketch – it’s likely because I didn’t darken the tops of his eye socks/below his brows, to match the contrast that was in the earlier sketch. I think it gave him the appearance of not having eyebrows, or having too-light eyebrows, which lessened the contrast I liked in that early sketch version.
Changed the date on the drawing to today’s, since it’s a different enough change to me now. Oh! I also meant to mention how the lighting conditions varied a bit through the photos (I’m next to a window) – I tried to adjust the photos to match the drawing as closely as I could to how it is on the paper, and hopefully the lighting doesn’t look too inconsistent.
Original post below:
Malyck warm-up drawing from yesterday when my hand was feeling stiff. Also, I’ve been practicing my letterforms recently – how does it look? Is it too ostentatious? Haha.
I’ve never been fond of how cursive “L” looks when I write it, which has been a small annoyance throughout the years as both my name and pseudonym begin with the letter. I also have always had messy handwriting, and earlier this year when I started using physical notebooks again, it inspired me to try practicing my handwriting to see if I could improve it.
To my mild horror, I realized so much time had passed since the last time I wrote cursive by hand, I had to look up how to write some letterforms again! This shocked me, because I grew up writing almost exclusively cursive. I remember enjoying writing in it over print/block letters, by a substantial amount. How could I have forgotten?
Anyway, in my search for a sheet showing basic cursive to remind myself, it lead me to become interested in “scripts” – not programming scripts or screenplays, haha – but styles of calligraphic writing which have been popular in the past (and present!).
I became partial to a script called “Old English Copperplate,” which is a type of handwriting which seemed most popular during the 18th century/1700’s in the west. It has flourishes and embellishments I find aesthetically pleasing, and I also thought they might be useful practice for improving my hand control. As I’ve never been confident in my writing abilities (or fond of how much hand writing looks). Oh! Though, I should mention that while I follow some of the script’s letterform’s, I don’t follow it precisely. The – I think they’re called “descenders?” – but tlike what you see in the lowercase “g” and “y” in “Malyck” and “Landy” written beside the artwork – those aren’t aren’t accurate to the script. They’re fun to write the loops this way!
And, as a bonus, I think it has been improving my drawings when using digital!
I like this drawing more as a sketch (the image captioned “Drawing work-in-progress” above) than how it looked in its original final version, seen above. I tried some small refinements this morning (the top image of this post), which I think helps a bit. But I still prefer how it looked in that earlier sketch version.
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!
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:
Why are sylvari so fun to paint? I never tire of them!