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
