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.
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!
I’ve been putting the final adjustments for the first chapter of The Harbinger’s Path, and thought it would be fun to show two past paintings of Trahearne and Malyck which were early representations for what has developed into this comic project. Only, when I saw the Malyck painting again, all I could notice were all the errors I wanted to fix!
I ended up spending some time yesterday doing a paintover of it – for fun, but also for practice. At the time it was painted (all the way back in 2018), I could see there were errors – which I had tried to fix, but not entirely successfully. It ended up being very satisfying painting over it, as I could now do many of the things I aspired to do at the time, but which were out of grasp for my skill level (though the current version is not perfect by any means – but hopefully mostly presentable in its current state, haha).
I also realized there were several things about Malyck’s design which I didn’t draw accurately back then – mainly his leather gauntlets and additional belt straps (though by far not limited to only those). I could not believe I forgot his additional belt straps, because nowadays, those are some of my favorite aspects of his design to draw!
Above are the current and original versions, for comparison. I still think the overall concept for the 2018 painting was solid, but the intended pose I was going for was more complex than what my skill level was capable of back then.
The raw file for this updated version is very messy in its full resolution, which is why I don’t consider it finished yet (and in the version without the additional color washes, you can plainly see the unfinished, rough areas). Until then, hopefully its current state is again mostly presentable!
And here it is as the pair of paintings I intended to post yesterday (now with this updated version of the Malyck painting).
The Trahearne painting is even older, from 2016. There are definitely parts of the anatomy I would do differently now, but I think compared to the 2018 version of the Malyck painting, this worked much better because of the decorative aspect of the sylvari design (I’m perpetually in awe of Kristen Perry’s design direction for concepting them – if you’ve never seen her documentation for GW2’s sylvari redesign, go check it out now – you’re in for a treat!) (I’m also so happy her site is up now! And that we can still view her design documents easily today. There’s so much to learn from admiring her design sensibilities!).
I should also probably mention somewhere on this sketchblog that the comic is slated to launch next Monday, May 12th! I also want to put together some fun extras, mainly a PDF of the first chapter which will be free to download. With how unreliable social media has become, I’ve also been meaning to set up a mailing list of some sort for a long while (there’s a link on my portfolio site, and at the bottom of the this blog’s homepage, but I never ended up sharing it anywhere else yet) – I’m planning to offer the PDF of the first chapter as a little bonus for joining the mailing list.
It’ll have some bonus art in it, either things like some of my favorite lineart drawings from the first chapter (before colors were added), and/or preview layout drafts from the next chapter(s) (I have up to chapter 3 drafted, but I’ll probably limit this to chapter 2 previews).
One of the reasons I didn’t end up sharing the mailing list when I first set it up, is because I didn’t know yet how I wanted to use it. I’ve had time to ponder it for a while now, and my current thought is I might segment the mailing list into different interests – but probably not too many, as that sounds like it might become complicated for me to manage. More thoughts about this in the full post if you, for some reason, wish to read my thinking aloud to myself, haha:
Edit: April 17, 2025
Started touching-up the left panel more. :) Proportion fixes for Trahearne. Also a higher-resolution version than earlier.
Earlier post below:
Ahh! I’ve been making steady progress on The Harbinger’s Path, and I’m really excited to finish the first chapter – partially because it will be so satisfying when I can finally call it done, but (maybe even more so) because I am SUPER excited to work on what happens next!
I have the layout for most of the next chapter drawn out, and I am looking forward so much to drawing these. It’s hard to stop myself from working on them now, but I know I need to finish the first chapter before I can work on the pages after again.
Below is a small preview of a scene from the next chapter – one of several scenes I’m dying to progress!
