“Varré” from Elden Ring | Current work-in-progress
I realized while typing the title for this post that it’s been exactly a month since I posted with the first time I drew Varré, haha.
I did the sketch for this last week while working on the comic pages, and I’d like to finish it sometime after the second chapter is a little more finalized.
“Varré” from Elden Ring | Initial sketch
The initial sketch from last week. The colors you see in this post were added quickly this morning, as a little break from the current comic for today.
The drawing at a slightly earlier stage from the top of this post, as I figured out which color scheme I wanted to use.
This is an earlier work-in-progress i think is less interesting. But I happened to save it, so here it is!
Initial thumbnail sketches.
I forgot I also saved the thumbnail sketches in the file – starts from left-to-right. The left idea was the initial idea, which is different from how the drawing ended up going. The middle thumbnail is trying out a variation of the first, as the first thumbnail wasn’t matching the idea I was imagining. (I might try that one again another time, as it’s a more difficult idea for me because it has more foreshortening).
The third thumbnail is the second one duplicated and then worked on further – lately, I’ve noticed I tend to concept my initial ideas this way. With a very messy thumbnail/sketch/silhouette, then duplicating it and dragging it to another part of the canvas. I might repeat this process a few times until I decide whether I like the idea or not. Then I’ll take the most recent version, hide the rest, and resize the “concept sketch” larger, and work on it that way.
It feels convoluted to me, but something about those extra steps seems to help me a lot with concepting.
“The Harbinger’s Path” | Trahaerne panel preview (in-progress / artwork not final)
Wanted to do an update post! Chapter 2 for The Harbinger’s Path is about 85% complete now. I finished the first “refinement” pass for all the pages last Thursday, and began doing the “final refinement” pass for the first half of the chapter (if you’re confused about what I’m talking about here, I go into my rough process in this post).
While working on them last night, I realized that because the files themselves are spreads – with 2 pages per file – I thought I had done half as much progress of the “final pass” as I’ve made so far. I realized I had double the amount of progress as what it had been feeling like for the past few days. I feel very silly, but this means I am confident I can begin posting new pages for chapter 2 next Monday, June 23rd!
“The Harbinger’s Path” | Malyck & Trahearne panel preview (in-progress / artwork not final)
I’m going back and forth as to whether adding Malyck’s luminescence here adds or not – for the scene itself, I think it could work either way in terms of what it says about the character.
“The Harbinger’s Path” | Malyck & Trahearne panel preview (in-progress / artwork not final)
About 80% refined.
“The Harbinger’s Path” | Malyck & Trahearne panel preview (in-progress / artwork not final) | Black-and-white version
This a small panel in the comic itself, but one of my personal favorites. I really like the contrast it has in black and white (though it will be in color in the comic itself). I feel like it’s working better in the black-and-white version – still working out how to convey a similar feeling when color is added.
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.
“The Harbinger’s Path” | Panel preview (in-progress / artwork not final)
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.
Initial color test for the previous panel preview (in-progress / artwork not final)
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.
“The Harbinger’s Path” | Panel preview (in-progress / artwork not final)
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 (in-progress / artwork not final)
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.
“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!
