In-progress comic panel showing “Riannoc” from Guild Wars 2. I’ve been having so much fun drawing this page, and couldn’t resist posting a progress crop. I’ll leave which comic is is from a mystery for now!
A slightly updated WIP is in the full post below, though I’m slightly leaning toward the one above right now:
Realized this earlier gif showing only the lines is probably a bit more clear to see.
Original post below:
I learned earlier this month that Michael Donovan, the voice actor for Malyck from Guild Wars 2, unfortunately passed away earlier this year in March. He was 72. The characters I tend to be most fond of in this game are often a result of how the VA’s approach their performance, and this certainly included Malyck. A friend linked me a post on reddit for a different fandom (here), where Donovan seemed quite beloved by many fans. He will be missed!
I didn’t set out to draw this specific animation, but I found myself sketching it one morning after hearing the news. I’d like to finish this sometime as a small tribute to him and his work as Malyck.
I haven’t had a chance to block out the colors properly yet (I’m going to refine the animation and draw the in-between frames first), but above shows a rough color block-out to give me an overall sense of how it’s looking so far.
August 21, 2026: Added the line WIP gif at the top of the post.
Small WIP panel crop from Nightmare’s Embrace I’ve been drawing recently – as well as, I soft-launched the info page for the comic last week, on July 22, 2026! I plan to retouch some of the artwork on it, as two of the profile artworks use older art (while the third is one of the paintover practices touched-up from last year), before sharing the page more widely. (That’s also when I’ll update the RSS.) In the meantime, the page in its current form is up at Landylachs.com/nightmare
In addition to the character profiles, the bottom of the page has a small gallery showing some of the various artworks I’ve drawn of the Nightmare’s Embrace characters from over the years. The art gallery is a similar layout as The Harbinger’s Path page index.
I also have some new info about this mini comic I will probably wait a bit before mentioning it elsewhere, but I’ll mention first here for myself (and you if you happen to stumble upon it). The original plan for this comic was to complete it and then post it in its entirety on the Nightmare’s Embrace website. I would have aimed to do this by about the end of this summer.
However, I learned an update a week or two ago that has changed my plans slightly. Now, I am leaning toward holding off posting this comic until at least after November – because this one I’m thinking of debuting it in print first instead, during a new event taking place this November in LA!
Similar to Manga Ichiba, this event is the first time they’re trying it out. I’ll post more about the event in another post when I have a chance to organize the info more coherently, as it’s still pretty new to me.
I also think slightly extending my timeframe for when I wanted to post Nightmare’s Embrace will prove useful to drawing the comic, as it probably isn’t too surprising to learn I ended up adding several new pages that weren’t part of my original draft for this mini-comic. Right now, I’m prioritizing finishing the original drafted pages first, as they are the most important for the story – but when reading the original draft layouts, I noticed that there is some context that is probably clear to me but might be a little unclear to someone reading the comic without knowing who the characters are yet.
It’s been such fun adding these pages with additional context, as much of it covers parts of the characters that have been part of their backstory for a long time, but that I’ve never depicted visually before. It is also, as always, continually fascinating for me to compare how I draft new pages now with how I drafted pages from the original layout – those were originally started at least a year or more ago, now! I still marvel at how much longer those older drafts take me to “fix” compared with when I start a new page now. I wonder if it will often be this way when working on pages drafted a while back vs newly-drafted pages, or if it’s something that might equalize over time as my workflow for comic pages becomes smoother over time.
The current live version of the Nightmare’s Embrace site is mainly an info page with character artwork, but since the soft-launch, the offline version of the site has all the comic pages at their various stages of WIP. Something about seeing all the pages in their web layout is really exciting for me with drawing these comics. I think that’s when they start feeling more “real” or tangible to me. It makes finishing them seem more within reach when I can browse through all the pages in their web layouts. It gives me a different impression compared to looking at the pages within explorer or an image viewer on my computer.
Maybe it’s because I can interact with the pages in how their final layout will be when the offline pages go online. Or maybe it’s because it is very satisfying for me to work on a page, update that page in the offline site, and then browse that part of the comic and see what impression the new page has compared to how it looked when I began working on it that day. It almost feels like a little trick you can play on your mind to make the task of finishing a comic seem less daunting.
Compared with The Harbinger’s Path, the drawing process for Nightmare’s Embrace definitely feels much smoother, and I am very excited about how it’s turning out so far! I still seem to prefer working on all the pages at once – this means that all the pages are in various stages of completion, instead of being drawn sequentially. This limits how much I can or want to show as I work on the pages, as most of it will probably be finalized at around the same time, instead of page-by-page. But I wanted to share something! And so this post was written.
I ended up starting to update some of the profile artwork – I’ll put the current versions along with the older versions for comparison in the full post below. The updates are on the more subtle side – you may likely need to flip between them to spot the differences. Also a progress WIP for the second panel afterward!
I’m at the point while drawing “Nightmare’s Embrace” (which I’m realizing as I’m typing this I should create a webpage I can link to, so I don’t have to explain what it is each time) where I can’t rely on my haphazard mix of different ref screens and drawings of my characters – at least, not if I want them to maintain a minimum semblance of design consistency.
I didn’t have a solid design for Lorcan’s outfit until now, because every time I’ve drawn him I’ve done so slightly differently. Which is acceptable for paintings, not as much for comic pages. This is a loose drawing tonight to figure out which design I want to use for him in the mini-comic.
I’ve been able to get away with loosely defining everyone’s outfits so far, because the main features I’m up to for most of the pages is still the general poses/panel clarity. And aside from screenshots, this older painting from 2024 has been my main outfit inspiration for “Lorcan,” a Nightmare Courtier from the mini-comic:
This is a cropped WIP for a Lorcan painting I don’t think I’ve posted anywhere yet, mainly because there are issues with it I’d ideally like to fix first. But this painting is the closest to what I’ve been thinking about for his armor.
His armor itself is most heavily based on the “Nightmare Court Guise,” from the medium Twilight Arbor armor set. Of course, I did some modifications, mostly for my personal enjoyment (haha).
My only potential reservation with his outfit at the top of this post is – during the main part of the mini-comic, Lorcan is a “recently-turned” Nightmare Courtier. He might look slightly too fancy, for being “recently-turned.” I think I can remedy this fairly easily by shortening some of the features of his outfit (mainly the waist skirts and forearm thorns/branches).
But I’ll try this version out first in the mini-comic drafts, and see how they look.
I also started the ref by drawing Lorcan’s underlying anatomy first – I’ll add it in the full post below:
Trahearne sketch from today to try some things out. Think I’d like to finish one sometime!
A few more versions I started fiddling with in the full post: