WORK STAGES: A sudden turn of events on THE CHASTE AND THE CHAINED!

Real-world crap severely limits my time to write up much text for today's post, but here's a TL;DR version: Due to my increasingly urgent need to get some kind of income rolling in the near future, I've quite abruptly decided to make the bold, daring, and desperate attempt to kickstart (but not capital-K Kickstart , as yet) fantasy test project The Chaste and the Chained as a writing-and-art enterprise.

For reasons I might try to detail in future Chaste updates, I belatedly realized that the project lends itself better to both further art tests and short-term comics production than the more ambitious and challenging fantasy series The Last Party; so, later this month (once real-world tribulations have, I hope, ceased to consume quite so much of my time) I'll be staggering ahead into full-on comic-page tests for conversational interludes from The Chaste and the Chained, which will be a recurring narrative format throughout the early part of the series.

In fact, here was my first page rough for one such interlude:

I scripted out all the dialogue for this scene, which features the Paladin queryng the Elfmage re: her provocative sartorial choices, before roughing out a different, shorter "walk 'n' talk" scene.

I can't locate the first page's initial Clip Studio Paint rough, but here's the analog-media underdrawing after I lightboarded said rough onto DC artboard:

Next, my scanned and uncorrected pencils and inks for that page:

The final page will need a fair bit of further tweaking in Clip Studio Paint (especially on the figures in panel 2), but I thought I'd show you fine folks the "work-in-progress" jpeg above. The analog-media ink & pencil combo worked out decently enough, but the scene's subsequent pages will be attempted in CSP on either or both iOS and PC versions.

Note that the Paladin's armor is still a drag to draw, but this story fragment in particular addresses one of several different ways I can get around having to draw said outfit repeatedly, as the following rough sketch might hint:

I'll close out this post with a sketch set of slight redesigns to the Paladin's hairstyle, based on some real-life photoref:

 And finally, a rough sketch for a flashback scene with a younger version of the Elfmage:

 Anyhoo, that's all for today, but rest assured that you'll be seeing much more Chaste content in the near future, okay?

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: No idea, TBH, but something should be coming up in the next M/W/F slot. Let's find out together, shall we?