Tag: sylvari - Page 4 - Landy’s Sketchblog

Nightmare Court Necromancer Sketches | January 31, 2026

Posted on January 31, 2026

Drawing two hairstyles from the in-game options to figure out which look might fit the character (Animated).

I’ve been idly wanting to figure out a look for a new Nightmare Court necromancer character I’ve been thinking about recently. He’s in the same setting as “Nightmare’s Embrace,” but isn’t a major character (he likely won’t feature in the mini-comic later this year). Different from my existing sylvari characters, the idea for him arose from a short story I was writing, instead from one of my existing in-game characters. My other sylvari characters originated from their in-game versions first, with their personalities developing afterward. Oftentimes, influenced by the experience playing them in-game.

I haven’t made a new GW2 character in a long time, and thought this was the perfect excuse to create a new one. I played around with the in-game style options the other day, and thought drawing them might help me decide on this character’s look. I think the color scheme is close – especially for the hair and glow color – but I’m not entirely satisfied on his hairstyle. The two here are the closest I was partial to for him, but I’m leaning toward sketching a few ideas at a later point not based on an in-game style, to see if I can figure out a look that fits him more closely.

Line drawing of a sylvari showing two hairstyles from the game. Left shows a short hairstyle with broad leaves. Right shows a long hairstyle with numerous small leaves. — Lineart sketch.

Painted still of the previous artwork without the added glow. — Still of the drawing, without glow.

Same drawing as before, only the right shows the lineart sketch, while the left shows the color sketch. — I just liked how this version looked.

Animated gif showing the pulsing glow of a sylvari with long hair. The glow is warm orange, his hair a dusky, reddish-violet. — Animated version of the hairstyle on the right.

I also tried out animating the glow color to see if it would help me decide on whether I liked either of these hairstyles for the character. Between these two, the one on the right fits him slightly better, and I think it turned out better when animated.

But doing this helped me decide I don’t think I will be satisfied with either hairstyle for him.

Still of the animated version from the top of this post.

Spellweaver Caydren (WIP) | January 7, 2026

Posted on 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.

Trahearne Wintersday Sketches | December 9, 2025

Posted on December 9, 2025

Spurred from a conversation with Jasmine on bluesky yesterday where she said, “trahearne is back and he’s santa– 🧑‍🎄” – which gave me a variety of amusing mental images I immediately wished to draw.

This is a warm-up sketch that I might finish another time.

This is 3/4-body in the full composition – putting it in the full post, because I think the shoulder is a little off (this is another anatomy construction practice from imagination drawing). Edit: Updated the 3/4 version it slightly; I guess I’ll leave it without a readmore now, though there are still off things about it – still a sketch/potential WIP).

Edit December 18, 2025

Adding one more. :p

Larger crop in the full post:

GW2 Reaper Sketch | December 2, 2025

Posted on December 2, 2025

Edit: A few more versions:

Digital drawing of a sylvari from Guild Wars 2. He has leafy green hair and glowing green eyes. He smirks in your direction!

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.

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!