Shadar-Kai Monk

The second post of today, this time with today's warm-up sketch, since today I have to tackle a large, late, gift piece so I did my usual random character rolling to get out a shadar-kai monk chick, and I figured it would be an opportunity to practice some Raven Queen tattoos on a chick.

Gnoll Ardent

Yesterday's warm-up sketch was the result of opening the D&D 4e Character Builder, closing your eyes, and picking a random race/class combo, it came out really weird. But the colors themselves are accidental, originally his clothes would be all green and purple until I realized purple just ruined the line art and i stopped, stood back, and realized the white fit perfectly. Yay accidents.

Taking a Warm-Up Sketch Too Far

Here's the finished product.

And this was the innocent little warm up sketch I did in my new sketchbook that started this whole thing.

Stylization Much

As of late I've noticed my art sort of losing it's luster and sense of life, which I've traced to the fact that I've been hung up on too many minor details and totally forgot about the stylization I once had. Now I've decided to change this.


Firstly, my pride and joy Orea. I've tried to take away all sense of roundness from Orea's figure and posture, in an attempt to show her as being a bit more jagged and not necessarily evil, but less caring than she looked before.
Jam on the other hand is designed to look sleeker and more agile, while still retaining her childishness. The Jam seen here is the Jam you'll see within 2 months of in-comic time.

To The Dogs

Despite having a busy day (it's now officially 3am) I've still managed to crank out some unnecessary concept art once again. The top drawing, the War Shepard, is the main mode of individual land transport, are similar to German Shepard/Hyena hybrids, they're like modern day sled dogs, only 6 feet tall. The one shown would be more of a scout or messenger shepard, seeing as it lacks the barding and muscle mask a battle shepard might wear. The bottom drawing is just my interpretation of lycanthropic lupines, y'know, werewolves. In my setting they're not only rather intelligent and eloquent, they bear resemblance to the stereotypical brit. These kinds of werewolves are also impervious to silver, that whole "you can only kill a werewolf with silver" thing was just a misconstruen translation, or the equivalence to a world wide game of telephone.

Butterfly Babe (UPDATED)

Mostly the product of boredom, but I've just been trying to populate the regions of my world I call "The Savage Norths" with various totemic tribes, some druidic, some shaman, some barbarian, some a mix of the three. But I forget what exactly triggered this idea, but it's essentially a halfling butterfly totem druid, who can transform into a swarm of butterflies, in this case, nice teal blue ones, the clan itself is very pacifistic, preferring to spend their time planting various flowers and growing things, rather than fighting or adventuring.

Just designing some general gear for the butterfolk, setting rules for their culture too.

Dem Youngins

Reworking Orea's timeline so that she was around 16 when her village was burned, then she spent 2 years with the White Raven Clan where she learned the ways of shadow and reforged her bastard sword, then found her way to Dockmoon and met up with little Jam. Though, I've always had the idea of her having burns under her gloves, uncontrolled arcane magic can do that to ya.

Night Sketchin!

First off, an idea for a steampunk fairy culture, they build their wings, they're flying marksmen, they're the size of elves, they replace the wild-archers role elves typically fit, except they use some degree of tech, steam tech.

I am watching Sweeney Todd. It is my favorite movie

It is late. Full sentences aren't happening.

I am the devil

To bugs, that is. So here's how I believe I've earned my title. As I was drawing in my sketchpad, I hear a faint buzz that I've come to associate with the stink bugs that keep finding their way into my house, namely my room, namely my desk next to the window with the broken screen. So I figured "Meh, whatevz" and went back to drawing. That is, until it made it's opening move. As I'm working: PLOP. The beast falls down in front of me, onto my sketchbook, desecrating it with it's foul presence. Now I'm on the move, I tilt the pad so the demon slides off onto my empty second desk behind me. As it's trying to maneuver itself out of it's prone position, I grab the conveniently placed can of hairspray, used for keeping up my old, bullet-proof liberty spikes. It's on. I do a quick test spray of the can, success, then the can's nozzle takes aim at this new invader. CHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. The spray connects, critical success, the demon's wings are now bound to its foul torso. It strains itself to lift it's aerodynamic apparatus from it's durable shell but to no avail, it was stuck, flightless with it's extremities becoming harder to operate by the second. The beast attempted to make a hasty retreat through the portal it had used for entry, but as he was creeping toward the midway point, I had discovered my heat lamps. As lamps turned their gaze to the spot of the horror, they sent their scorching rays in the demon's direction, speeding up the hairspray's immobilization process. This was not enough. On went more hairspray, it's delightful hiss, its freezing breath, all pure pleasure. This continued until the beast ceased movement, at which point, most would assume victory was there's, but not me, I had to be sure. As a test, I opened the window the creature was longing for, now completely agate, zephyrs pouring in. The demon suddenly sprung to life once more and continued it's pursuit of undeserved freedom. But being who I am, I just watched as the demon made its ascension until it's victory was in sight. Window open, it was now perched on the window sill and seemed to halt a moment, get its second wind, maybe think about it's family back home, reflect on his recent folly, or maybe just take in the view. But that moment was all I needed, it was still, perfectly position for the impending. SLAM! The window closes, crushing the beast, ending it's struggle for existence. I love me.

Death by Color Theory (UPDATED)

Just colored the cleric in to match the rest of the scene. The bottom left is where the text goes.

While working on page 2 of the comic, there are some panels that seemed to deserve more attention than others. Namely the slaughter scenes. I've decided to go with the movie-poster cliche of orange/blue for this one for a few reasons. The light blue is an easier, softer color, representing the ease of the kill while the orange is the eye-grabber, really bringing your eye through the picture, instead of just at the picture. And y'know, I can only digitally paint so much before I start to hate it. That's a reason too.

A Preview For Y'all

This is just a little preview for my readers of page one of the comic, sans text. Spent around 5-6 hours on this and while digi-painting the backgrounds of the comic take a lot more time than just inking and coloring like usual, I much prefer it since it's a lot more fun and keeps my falcon punch away from the tablet.