A welcome palate cleanser after a week of painting nothing but comic backgrounds. I should definitely do these more often.
Wyatt is one of those "You know, you will probably never get to use this in the story, why are you even making it--- what do you mean 'fun'" moments for my brain. No matter how minor the character is, I tend to get a rough outline of their life's story just as a byproduct of putting my head on idle when working with them.
2022-12-01 14:50:59 +0000 UTC
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I spent 6 years at the Institute for Communication Studies and Journalism. I... may have emerged slightly damaged from that experience, but it did leave me with a surprising skill of being able to create somewhat convincing fake newspaper clippings.
This whole thing started as me creating just a few background elements for various SF pages, but during the rework, I realized I can actually harnes...
2022-11-09 23:12:15 +0000 UTC
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When I was about to archive this piece, I was surprised to discover that I seem to had recorded pretty much all of its creation, despite not being allowed to stream it or share it publicly at the time.
Not that it's terribly uncommon for me; I do it for a lot of the paintings overall, because I like to keep a short and accessible reminder of techniques and steps I took during each particular paintings (my brain will certainly not settle for a style or a stable method any tim...
2022-10-25 00:13:31 +0000 UTC
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"A gladium, then? What will you do without a warband?"
"The same thing I would do with one. Kill Flame Legion. Kill them however I can."
[source]
Sicaea the Shrouded, tribune Desertgrave's personal assassin.
This was a lot of fun to play with and a lot of story to hide into the painting, from the weapon choice to the blood whisky. I w...
2022-10-24 23:41:14 +0000 UTC
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"Scald this, we need to wait for backup! Come back, soldier! Howl! That's a bloody order!"
Fall so far sure is a busy time of year, but I'm glad I was finally able to squeeze in finishing of this thing, and this time it's actually on time for the Tyrian Halloween!
The concept of this story is fairly old, dating to some 2018 or so. It ended up shelved as an early storyboard for a long while, because the original script only had random shouts from the risen in th...
2022-10-18 15:56:44 +0000 UTC
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This was pretty easy to put together, as it was completed over just a few recent streams. Still took some cleaning up as my system has this nasty habit of randomly drawing unsolicited overlays, but I think I managed to edit out most of them.
Original runtime was about 18 hours. Give or take a couple more of uncaptured footage featuring me trying to come up with decent composition for two cubs, one charr and a dinghy rider.
2022-08-22 11:12:40 +0000 UTC
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"Keep it up like this, you'll turn them into quaggan."
Koruscar turned to his brother who was still lounging in the gently rocking boat. "You said you were asleep."
"Someone has to keep an eye out for you." The dark-furred male cast his twin a sidelong glance as if to prove a point. "Not to mention, she shrieks like a gutted raptor." He watched as Koruscar just grinned over his shoulder as the small female pawed at...
2022-08-21 10:03:26 +0000 UTC
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This was supposed to be a quick one-off palate dumb joke of a cleanser after the whole Frostbound layoff.
Well. That was neither quick nor palate-cleansing.
And it is based on a true story, since I did spend quite a bit of time fishing when End of Dragons came out:
(Seriously, I managed t...
2022-08-06 14:12:51 +0000 UTC
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Patreon finally enabled its fancy new interface for me, and I have some catching up to do!
When I picked up FFXIV shortly before Shadowbringers, I only did so because hrotghar seemed pretty cool and I was drawn in by the FFXV collab event. I ended up sticking around for... reasons that sometimes elude me, and this guy.
One of these days, we were playing 30 questions,...
2022-08-06 13:53:28 +0000 UTC
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I meant to post these before May was over, and then I woke up one day and it was June. (Really, who is it that has the audacity to keep changing days while I sleep?)
Here's some painting progress I made during May's art streams. First is a follow up to Heyday, since I made way too many jokes already about how the introduction of personal boats to Tyria was the best thing that ever happened to Kirruak. And sin...
2022-06-04 11:50:51 +0000 UTC
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So, as you may have gathered if you talked with me in the past year about anything Guild-Wars-related, I really like Icebrood Saga. It was not without blemishes or a bit of "what the hell were you thinking" in some places, but when all was said and done, I was left with a very tight, very emotionally driven and very character-strong narrative that I could not help but love even without considering it was predominantly about charr. Which is quite something coming from me, since I had been open...
2022-05-11 14:27:24 +0000 UTC
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I finished these, and then I completely forgot to post the patron versions outside of the Discord server. Terribly sorry!
Here's my "latest" batch from character designs for a project I started poking around in my spare time midway through last year. I managed to finish the designs sketched out in April during a stream (although the base designs are from last year, they lacked a proper reference). In no particular order of importance:
Kamal (arab horse), Ella (nanulak), Shana (che...
2022-05-02 11:42:32 +0000 UTC
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I am happy to report I managed to collect the timelapse for the recent painting. I apologize for occassional odd skips here and there, this one was put together from a lot of very short sessions rather than few longer ones.
This painting is a bit cursed, since it went through several photoshop crashes (one particularly nasty case had me having to actually use the recorded footage to salvage a major part of it at the cost of having to clean up and upscale the resolution and lose the laye...
2022-03-24 10:58:09 +0000 UTC
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The male's voice grew from a spiteful hiss into a roar powerful enough to match the firestorm he had at his beck and call.
"Do you think us too weak to fight? Too meek to defend our own? You thought you made us fangless? We chose to play nice. We bowed for your sakes. But as long as one ember burns, you will never break us! Flame take you!"
The fire seemed to have a soul of its own – one tempered by fury, determination and righteous anger ...
2022-03-22 10:17:02 +0000 UTC
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As I've said a few times before, 2022 should see the return of some of some familiar faces. While Semper Fidelis has been somewhat hibernating and I didn't get to publish any new finished stories for quite a while, I spent the past year chipping away at it until a solid foundation of a book with a lot of groundwork already done was where I was at.
This particular segment is part of a set called First Principles. Instead of delving into the main story right away, I will share so...
2022-01-18 00:56:34 +0000 UTC
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Our lives and minds are made out of stories. Just close your eyes, and you can become anything. The errant knight or the wandering gladium. The divine or the accursed. The boy saved from the gallows, the sundered shepherd. The dreamer, the realist or the broken spirit. You can don these masks for a breath, and then let them go with another.
Go and share yours.
This year was... well. It's a thing that happened, I supp...
2021-12-27 09:38:59 +0000 UTC
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So, you guys want me to make more comics. All fine and dandy, except they take a heck of a long time (especially since I moved to a scene-by-scene/chapter-by-chapter scenario instead of page-by-page) and during all that time of waiting, you probably accumulate questions. Questions like: "Am I secretly sponsoring a dead guy?", "Did you elope to Tunguska to live off crater moss and only send updates through the services of a very enthusiastic snail?", "Will we ever see another comic from you?"<...
2021-11-06 16:17:33 +0000 UTC
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Cobwebs and ghosts are about to go out of style in the next few hours (making this very obviously a "this was supposed to be done during Halloween" thing, but my health kind of disagreed on that matter), so no better time than now for me to start picking them up and giving them another use. It probably doesn't count as recycling, but it does count as fun. And I'm happy to report that it will be ready for sharing, soon!
I would also like to apologize to all the spiders that were made hom...
2021-11-01 05:15:00 +0000 UTC
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First of all, hi, everyone who joined this Patreon for charr comics! I am very happy to have you and I'm already working on the next two short stories from the Legions.
But that's by far not my only project.
While my Patreon is a bit of a multi-target venture these days, splitting my work between my original stuff and boatloads of charr, I haven't forgotten what brought this coin jar into...
2021-10-02 12:11:54 +0000 UTC
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All was quiet in Drizzlewood coast.
Gone was the constant roar of engines and thrumming of charr copters. Speakers droning Stormsounder's recruitment propaganda all the months past were shattered and silenced. Marching orders, clashing weapons, screams and roaring of the wounded and those still fighting, even the firing squads executing Smodur's skritt justice... all of that constant noise just died down one day and never came back. But neither di...
2021-09-16 00:02:00 +0000 UTC
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Hi, guys! So, since Summer's over, I can finally crawl out of the burrow long enough to share stuff.
Icebrood Saga was honestly an absolute blast, and I was surprised to find out how much the characters gripped me this time around (and it was, by far, not because most of them were charr). And while Efram is my personal favorite (with Brightblaze and Prisca, of course), writing-wise there was none other more interesting than Crecia Stoneglow.
Her backstory is excellent, her writing...
2021-09-02 00:40:09 +0000 UTC
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As I forgot to post this along with the painting, I may as well use the comic as an excuse and do it now. Those two things have more in common than one may think. So here's the breakdown of Unbroken, an illustration done for the Wintersday Zine 2018. Back then, it was a replacement piece for the latest comic, which was to be my original zine submission until it became clear that due to my dayjob a...
2021-06-15 10:57:31 +0000 UTC
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PAIN RESPONSE; Trait: Major, Training: Acrobatics
Gain regeneration and remove damaging conditions when struck while below the health threshold.
Well... that took a forever and a half.
I know the Almorra comic is officially the first one I showed to the world (both finished and in early preview), but this is the first one I conceived, all the way back some four years ago. Not much has changed on the comic side of things, really. I added a few pa...
2021-06-12 13:01:42 +0000 UTC
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"Sit. No, stop it. No! There. Sit and stay sitting! Would you-- Argh, the bloody cows have more discipline than you two!"
Having to spend most of the past few weeks drawing various kinds of backgrounds left its mark, and my brain was demanding a bit of a palate cleanser, since the quality was starting to dip. I took an afternoon to doodle something character-focused and dumb, and while I'm not entirely happy with the result, it's at least presentable, so I'll ...
2021-06-01 09:01:14 +0000 UTC
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So, after spending half an eternity answering the question of "do you have an online gallery somewhere?" with a manly and decisive "...mneeeh..." and pondering the options between lackluster online platforms, the buggery that is managing my own website, and just dodging the question altogether like a champ, I figured I may as well do... well, nothing about the above, really.
But a small community Discord server is also an option!
Here's a handy invite link for you: 2021-05-21 09:24:33 +0000 UTC
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Slowly, panel by panel, this thing has been inching towards completion. It's measly six pages, but this thing has kind of pushed me to a limit.
One of the unexpected side effects of my mental shattering last fall was discovering that I cannot draw backgrounds anymore to save my life, at least not the way I used to do them all the time. I had to rewire my brain and figure out which method will work for me now, and after tons of spite and many fruitless attempts on my part, I finally land...
2021-05-21 08:33:33 +0000 UTC
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"I know not what his name was. Mother called him Rajat, that is all she told. This... this is not the image I had in my mind."
Since my comics have been stuck on the background phase for quite some time now, I had to do something besides writing to feel like I'm actually working, and as it happens, there were reasons that led me to sketch up a late middle-aged wolverine/tiger hybrid.
What do you even call that? Wiger? Terine? Wolverger? Poor guy, even hi...
2021-03-26 22:28:40 +0000 UTC
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In another part of my "what even is my specialization" random series of "how did I do"s, I thought you could find it interesting if I showed you the process of making a title for a book, or a graphic novel in this case.
I'm by no means an expert and it's always a lot of trial and error, so please, don't claim to replicate my ways to get anything resembling a success, but since I have a solid trove of steps in progress of this thing, I could as well give you something hopefully worth you...
2021-03-03 18:53:16 +0000 UTC
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Phrase: To "whistle in the wind" means to try in vain to change something that is impossible to change through your power alone.
Superstition: Whistling aboard a ship was seen as tempting fate. Some believed it would cause the wind to take offense and try and show you how it's done, bringing stark weather.
Practice: Whistling was often banned aboard Royal Navy vessels because it was considered a possible sign of mutiny (mutineers could communicate through whistle...
2021-03-03 18:52:15 +0000 UTC
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So, that could have gone better.
I wanted to dive headfirst into warmup sketching and planned to use FebROARy as a springboard. Wellp, talk about springing too hard, because before the first Feb week was up, I went nose-down due to my spine tableflipping the rest of the body and storming out of the place, presumably being sick over me taking it for granted... Considering I couldn't sit straight for longer than a few minutes, let alone sit upright enough to reach the tablet, most of my d...
2021-03-02 13:33:51 +0000 UTC
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