Tag: harbinger updates

“The Harbinger’s Path” on Hiatus until January 2026 | December 8, 2025

Posted on December 8, 2025

New pages will resume in January 2026!

Ah! The dreaded hiatus! I was hoping I’d be able to continue The Harbinger’s Path update schedule until Chapter 3’s conclusion. When I originally planned the page schedule, I had more time during November & December than what ended up happening. There was a point in November where I thought I’d have to put the comic on hiatus for about a week and a half due to learning I’d be out of town for a bit, but I scrambled to finish a few pages early, and was able to keep the schedule last month without interruption.

The Harbinger’s Path | Chapter 3, page 21, panel crop

While I’m pleased I kept a consistent 2-pages/wk update post schedule since Chapter 3’s launch on September 29 through December 8 today – I think that isn’t too shabby considering this was my first time trying a webcomic update schedule! – I unfortunately don’t think I can do what I did in November again this month. Between deadlines and holiday obligations, December is turning out even busier than November. Most importantly, these next few pages are more complex for me to draw than the pages in November. I mentioned the possibility of a hiatus in last week’s post, but didn’t link it anywhere because I was hoping I’d be able to avoid one.

As mentioned in that post, my main concern is I don’t want the quality of the pages to suffer due to lack of time. Or even fatigue, as I’ve been sacrificing a bit more sleep than I really should for the most recent pages. I felt it beginning with today’s page 21, as it is not as refined as I would like. I plan to touch it up this month during the hiatus.

Comic panel crop of Malyck from Guild Wars 2. Portrait crop. As he smirks toward Trahearne off-camera, text reads: "....Have you wondered-" "-why I remain in this form?" — The Harbinger’s Path | Chapter 3, page 5, panel crop

What happens during the hiatus?

So, the hiatus! What does this mean? This is a hiatus for the comic’s page updates, but not the comic’s progress. I will be drawing the remaining pages during this hiatus, and using this additional time to try and make them a little extra special!

I’m very sorry to interrupt the comic’s update schedule, as I fully intended to continue with regular page updates until Chapter 3’s conclusion. It seems a bit silly in hindsight, but I didn’t account enough time for the unforeseen circumstances that inevitably crop up this time of year (Nov & Dec specifically). Back in September/October, my schedule for Nov/Dec looked so much more open than they ended up being. In the future, I would plan for more of a page buffer during busier times of the year like now.

I promise I will work very hard to make Chapter 3’s conclusion worth the wait, and I’m confident this is the best decision for the comic to maintain its quality. And, hopefully, your enjoyment of it!

The Harbinger’s Path | Chapter 3, page 19, panel crop

When will new pages be posted?

New pages will tentatively be posted on January 19, but I’ll confirm this as we approach closer to this date.

Thank you for reading this year!

Thank you so much again for reading The Harbinger’s Path this year! Truly, it means the world to me. I’m still amazed there are people who enjoy reading my comics. It’s been a pleasure drawing this story for you, and especially reading your reactions and thoughts. I can’t wait to finalize this chapter, as well as look forward to drawing new comics and new stories in 2026!

In the meantime, enjoy your holidays! And, please look forward to January 2026 to find out what happens next with Trahearne and Malyck!

The Harbinger’s Path | Chapter 3, page 10, panel crop

Edited for clarity while more awake later the same day. Also added a few of this chapter’s page previews to break up the text.

Trahearne Detail Crop – The Harbinger’s Path, Ch1 | November 11, 2025

Posted on November 11, 2025

Detail crop showing Trahearne with a malevolent expression. — Detail crop from the final page of Chapter 1 from **The Harbinger’s Path** | *Retouched Version*

Detail crop of Trahearne from the finale page for Chapter 1 of The Harbinger’s Path. Always meant to post this at some point, and why not today!

It’s curious for me looking at this again. At the time of this page’s completion, I was quite pleased with this portion of the page, in particular. Though they’re very loose, it was much more line-focused than I’d done before attempting chapter 1, and this panel was probably the most heavily line-focused drawing in the entire chapter. (And if it is not, it felt this way to me.)

Before this chapter, I was never very happy with my line drawings – it’s why I almost always added color to drawings before showing them. I didn’t think they looked presentable on their own without some color or value to back up the lines. This drawing was the first one I made in years where I thought it turned out decent even without color or value – I didn’t have to shade this one as much as I normally would for the drawings I was doing at the time.

Even so, as it tends to happen when doing a longer project like a comic, I can see the way I draw Trahearne now is a little different compared to how I was drawing him in Chapter 1. I’ve been aware that the style in the comic shifts a bit – mostly from chapter to chapter, but even within pages of the same chapter. Some if it is intentional experimentation (I’ve been drawing several expressions for Trahearne on page 15 this week, where he looks a little more “seinen” or older – and I might need to tone this down to not make him look too different from earlier pages), while other times it’s been a natural progression from how I’ve grown to enjoy drawing him.

But there are a few different stylistic ways I like to draw him – mostly between a little more youthful or “bishounen” and slightly more mature or more “seinen,” let’s be honest, haha. I enjoy drawing him both ways, but I hope it doesn’t look too inconsistent in the comic. At least, not in a way that is distracting while reading.

Oddly, I think I am more consistent when it comes to Malyck – but I haven’t done a full read-through of the entire comic from page 1 to the current page in a while. I might change my mind if I give that a go sometime.

Edit: Ironically (or predictably?), right after making this post, it made me want to retouch this drawing. I’ve done so above (and to the live page) – the original will be below in the full post, preserved for comparison!

Ch3, Page 14 Animation – The Harbinger’s Path | November 6, 2025

Posted on November 6, 2025

Animated gif showing Malyck wielding Caladbolg. Leyline energy pulses around the, as does Caladbolg's internal glow. — Malyck | Roughly animated comic panel crop | The Harbinger’s Path; Ch3, pg 14

In addition to the Trahearne and Malyck practice animation I made for Heart of Thorns’ 10th anniversary last month, a much smaller thing I also finished by that day was adding a bit of animation to chapter 2’s finale page. This version of the page has been live since the, and you can view it here!

Animated gif showing Trahearne ensnared by winding, thorned vines. His bioluminscence pulses frantically. — Malyck | Roughly animated comic panel crop | The Harbinger’s Path; Ch3, pg 14

It’s likely obvious, but this page was not drawn with the intention of animating it from the start. I tend to save several steps of the process in the comic page files, as I have the habit of duplicating layers and working on the duplicate when I want to make a larger change or know I will be progressing the page more. This makes my file files larger than they need to be, but on the plus side, I like being able to go back into the file and see how the page progressed over time.

My first attempt to animate this page was all the way back in August – which I just remembered, I even posted that test panel here. This test is what lead to the practice animation from last month. Even though this page’s animation is both much simpler and rougher than last month’s animation, I still have a little sentimental feelings over it, since dabbling with this page was what really lead to all the animation practices afterward (and I have more I want to do in the future!).

So! That’s why I wanted to have a version of this page up, even if it is rough around the edges. It is cleaned up from the August test – the page now is rebuilt completely from scratch from the August version, using 3 layers from the comic file itself. While it is not intended to be super-smooth (which I hope is clear – it is keyframed and not tweened), I hope the cadence feels intentional.

Does it add a little flavor to the page, or does it distract? Feel free to let me know anywhere, as I’m biased toward it, but I would definitely like to know if anyone preferred the previous static page instead of this animated version!

Page Thoughts – The Harbinger’s Path: Ch3, page 5 | October 13, 2025

Posted on October 13, 2025

Chapter 3, page 5 from "The Harbinger's Path" GW2 fan comic. — The Harbinger’s Path | Chapter 3, page 5

This post is adapted from what I originally wrote in the email update for Chapter 3, page 5 of The Harbinger’s Path. I ended up having more thoughts about this page than I expected, and wanted to jot them down somewhere that can be referenced more easily than email.

I’ve also expanded it in some areas, since I feel less annoying doing that on my blog here – I try not to overly ramble in email updates. ;D

“Headcanon” Background Info

This page has one of the clearest reminders this is a headcanon story. Malyck’s choice of using “Nightmare Commanders” is an intentional callback to the concept art Carlyn Lim did for three “Nightmare Court Commanders” during Heart of Thorns’ pre-launch development. (You can see her brilliant concept artworks for them here.)

In her concept art for these three, she labels each as:

“Nightmare Commander – Duel Wielder”
“Nightmare Court Commander – Executioner”
“Nightmare Court Commander – Seer”

These, of course, later became the Mordrem Guard Commanders in the expansion’s live release, and canon story. The characters of Blademaster Diarmid, Axemaster Hareth, and Stavemaster Adryn we all know and love.

“Nightmare Court Commanders”

But how those original descriptions on Carlyn’s concepts stir the imagination! They conjure endless story possibilities. What potential narratives might a “Nightmare Court Commander” have been considered in, during those early Heart of Thorns writing sessions?

What if Diarmid, Hareth, and Adryn had been part of the Nightmare Court – leaders, even! – instead of a faction entirely separate from it, as they are in the canon story?

What might they have been like, what might their stories have been? I haven’t even touched on what a “Nightmare Court Seer“ might have implied! Was Adryn possible some type of “Seer of Mordremoth” in his early incarnations?

How would this have changed their relation to Mordremoth? To the Nightmare Court?

To Faolain?

It is far too easy to pleasantly ruminate on this!

Page Layout Process

Chapter 3, page 5 is one of the earlier pages I drafted for The Harbinger’s Path. A version of this page has existed, in some form, as early as Chapter 1 of the comic.

As such, to me, this page’s layout is not as strong as I think I could do now. I’ve hopefully learned some things since Chapter 1, page 1! If I were to do this page again now, I would do several things differently – but I decided to keep the page’s panel compositions relatively the same. For a few reasons – the main one being, when I began this comic, my aim was for this to be practice and a learning experience. It is very easy for me to end up not finishing what I start in my personal art. It is something I have to consciously choose not to do. It is why I have many “works-in-progress” – something I suspect many artists can relate to.

Additionally, I’ve never managed to draw a “finished” a graphic novel page – not a single one – before starting The Harbinger’s Path. Much less an entire chapter! My initial aim with this project was to finish one, completed chapter. Just one. I did not know if I could do it.

Chapter 3 Layouts

And here we now are on Chapter 3! Much to my amazement and surprise. I am not sure how that happened, but one of the things that helped me enormously was setting personal deadlines. This helps me to continually move forward, and not become too “stuck” on something. Such as continuously redoing an early page (which did happen to some of those pages in chapter 1 – especially earlier on). One of the things I had to practice was being okay with calling a page “finished,” even if it was not what I would consider truly “finished” – which became easier over time. The more pages I complete, the better I understand that comics, more than illustrations, are sums of the whole instead of their parts. Small quibbles on individual pages are not as substantial, if sequences of pages work coherently together – as an interconnected, narrative whole.

This is an arguably convoluted way of explaining why I did not redo more of chapter 3, page 5’s layout. I could have either done this – which might have made this page stronger, even though it is (hopefully) currently in a presentable state – or I could have dedicated this time to furthering future pages in chapter 3, which were (at the time) not yet drafted.

I ended up doing the latter, which is partially how chapter 3 gained a few more pages than I had initially planned. i think this time was worth it, and benefits the chapter and overall comic. And, on a personal level, I like seeing the progress of these earlier drafted pages, in comparison to the ones I drafted later – though I do question a bit whether this might be jarring to a reader, who hasn’t seen which pages were drafter more recently, versus earlier.

Of course, you can be the judge when you see the rest of the chapter. ;D

Process Crops – The Harbinger’s Path Ch3 | October 4, 2025

Posted on October 4, 2025

Progress drawing of Malyck from Guild Wars 2, who is painted with a red mask in preparation for adding colors later. — The Harbinger’s Path | Chapter 3 work-in-progress crop *(art not final)*

Progress crop from the page I’m cleaning up today I felt like sharing. The colors are not the actual ones – it’s just a bright color I’m using to see the mask more easily.

Edit: October 13, 2025

Repurposing this post to add any additional process crops I feel like sharing for chapter 3!

Did some drawing for this panel tonight! Did the line sketch drawing and color masks The red there is again only for masking, and not the final color – though it looks a little nifty to me, as-is.

I have a confession to make – I have never been comfortable choosing local colors until drawing this comic. I’m not sure what happened, but I would never, not in a million years, have been able to choose the colors in this panel a year ago. My local colors often lacked harmony when I chose them, and I would need to do quite a bit of trial-and-error until figuring out a palette which was somewhat decent – and even then, I was often displeased by the colors.

Remember, Chapter 1 was initially conceived as a black-and-white comic. For that chapter – and that chapter alone – I added color after doing a greyscale value pass. This was my initial plan because I am very fond of black-and-white comics – but it was also because I was not confident whether I could pull off color successfully for a comic page.

In Chapter 2, this chapter was conceived in color from the start. However, it uses a mixture of different workflow experiments for different pages. Many of these pages didn’t begin with local color. Many began with a burnt sienna value drawing, with colors layered on top (though I might not have used this method for every page).

Chapter 3 is the first time, I think, where I’ve been starting with local colors first (though I’d need to check chapter 2 to be certain). I never would have had the confidence to do this in chapters 1 or 2 – or anytime before this year. I definitely focused on values first before now, and drawing the comic has really felt like remember all the things I used to love about lines. I haven’t really worked with lines (beyond very loose sketches) for years.

It’s been helping so much with making several things which have eluded me for years feel much more natural to me. Mainly improving my construction drawing from imagination skills, and I think it is also the reason my ability to choose local colors seems to be improving.

I’m so happy I started this comic, for so many reasons, and this is just one more reason to add.

Here’s how it looked when I opened the file tonight (with some text redacted to prevent spoilers).

Edit: October 19, 2025

Crop from one of the panels I’ve been drawing this weekend. While drawing chapter 2, discovering Krita’s “isolate layer function” felt like unlocking a superpower. I was vaguely aware this functionality existed in Photoshop, but I never used it, because I rarely worked with lineart until this year. I never appreciated how useful and time-saving it was until now.

During chapter 1 and partway in chapter 2, whenever I needed to adjust part of the lineart, I was manually going through my convoluted stack of layers, hiding and un-hiding through them until I could see the lines clear enough to pinpoint what I needed to adjust.

But now, no more! All i need to click is “isolate layer” and that’s it! I can see the entire layer! Right the, right there.

Magic, I tell you.

Edit: November 14, 2025

Currently enjoying cleaning up this panel!