Felt like sharing a small in-progress preview of a panel I’m refining today. It’s Caydren!
Posts Tagged with nightmare’s embrace
Spellweaver Caydren (WIP) | January 7, 2026
Happy New Year! I have so much I want to post, but those will take me a little more time to write (I’ve had very little time in the start of the new year, though some exciting news to share later!) – I wanted to post something quick in the meantime!
Work-in-progress drawing of “Spellweaver Caydren,” one of three main characters in the “Nightmare’s Embrace” mini-comic I plan to finish this year. Caydren is a Nightmare Court elementalist. I have always enjoyed the idea of the thorned vine whip weapons Nightmare Court NPC’s in the GW2 game use, and that I don’t believe are accessible to us as players (though it’s been a few years, correct me if this is no longer the case) – so, what better reason to vicariously enjoy this, than by fitting one of my characters with one in comic form? :D
This drawing is from several months ago, and I had hoped to finish it by now, but other projects have been arresting my time. I felt like showing its current progress for now, instead! I plan to finish this one, though in some ways it is mainly a “concept drawing,” to see how he looked with the horned vine whip.
GW2 Reaper Sketch | December 2, 2025
Edit: A few more versions:
I’m not sure if I prefer the earlier version to these. I started painting over in the earlier version, and in this version, I tried tinkering with the lineart layer more. I’m leaning toward this version because the drafting has a better foundation here.
Original post below:
Small sketch of my Guild Wars 2 reaper/necromancer.
I can’t believe it’s December already! A month or two ago, I was expecting December to be on the more relaxing side. But what’s tended to happen every year now, is it inevitably becomes filled up with various events as the year draws to a close. I’m hoping I can still finish the progress on the personal projects I wanted to do – which is mainly the page updates for The Harbinger’s Path comic.
I was out of town for about a week in November, and I was originally sightly concerned I’d have to put the comic updates on a hiatus for about 3 updates’ worth. I learned I’d be heading out of town a little on the later side, and I scrambled to finish about 3 pages a week earlier than I had originally scheduled. These were pages 15 – 17.
Once I learned of this trip, I drafted a schedule for how much time I had and how many pages I’d have to finish to be able to still continue with page updates while out of town. I was leaning toward announcing a hiatus for that week/those pages, but to my surprise, I was able to finish the pages early. This makes me think I’m probably too lenient on myself when it comes to project management for my personal projects when I haven’t hard deadlines, haha.
Anyway, with all the new events that are now planned for December (mostly holiday-related irl ones), I am hoping I will be able to still keep my intended schedule for this chapter’s updates. But December has a good deal more going on than November did – which isn’t surprising, and something I should have anticipated earlier than now. I am slightly wary that I might have to actually do a small hiatus this month. It’s still too early to say, but I don’t want the quality of the pages to suffer if time truly becomes an issue.
Caydren Paintover | August 4, 2025
Felt like doing another “paintover” practice of one of my older paintings as a warm-up today – which I inevitably spent more time on than I intended. I wouldn’t consider this a “finished” painting, but I’d considered it “finished” as far as its intended practice. :D
This is my “spellweaver” Nightmare Court sylvari from Guild Wars 2, who is one of the main characters from my not-yet-released “Nightmare’s Embrace” project (a future short comic, separate from The Harbinger’s Path Trahearne & Malyck comic). His loyalty to Nightmare is what the quote refers to – like Cadeyrn before him, he believes Nightmare represents the “true” nature of all sylvari, and that the Dream is a corrupting force separating all sylvari from their true selves.
The full version of the original in the full post:
“Nightmare’s Embrace” WIP Preview | July 25, 2025
Small preview from “Nightmare’s Embrace,” my second Guild Wars 2 comic I’ve been chipping away at here and there. This is an early color test from a few months ago.
Originally, I was planning to start working on “Nightmare’s Embrace” after I’ve finished “The Harbinger’s Path.” I might still do this, but I’m also thinking about perhaps working on them side-by-side – mainly depending on how long Harbinger runs.
Maybe I’ll do something like, one chapter of The Harbinger’s Path, then one chapter of Nightmare’s Embrace. Still considering which to do.
Here’s a fuller shot of the panel – I need to fix the arm proportions in the final.