It’s Christmas! And some of us are lonely during the holidays, so what makes me less lonely? Drawing pin-ups of my friends D&D characters!
Not really, but I thought it would be a lot of fun, and it was! I’m not sure what I’ll draw next but it was a fun exercise.
So, with an update coming hopefully this weekend, I thought it would be prudent to talk about the new outfits seen on our favorite elves.
Starting with Enna (left), we have a small update on her previous update. Her pink Vest is now buttoned up, and her iconic sash is now the only belt she has (freshly cleaned of bloodstains) She also now sports a new skirt with an ivy pattern embroidery at the hem. Boots are the same as before, as is the shirt with her sleeves rolled to her elbows. Her hair is now loose, but pulled back into a small ponytail to stay out of her eyes.
Delsys (Center) has a pretty significant change. Not only is her over all color scheme a little lighter, but I’ve given her a full chest piece of leather armor, which has several belts at her waist. The dress underneath is a lighter green color, and when in action should flare out dramatically. She also now has a darker green cloak, the same color of her old dress. Her hair is now pulled back on one side with a small braid pinned to the rest of her hair.
Mira (right) is now sporting her new Feather Leather armor she found in the necromancer’s cave. A small boutonniere of flowers is attached to one of the gold pins of her half cape, which has been artfully pinned to the side. I wanted the overall effect of her outfit to be much more dapper, and give an air of nobility. So the vest and the slightly puffed sleeves are new over her old boots and pants. Her hair has been pulled into a bun, but she still has her long artful tendrils to frame her face. And of course, her red lipstick.
I haven’t included Lyra/Leo because I’m going to write a whole piece over the evolution of her appearance since she was just a Dragon Age OC in my brain.
Our very lovable Druid has her origins from one of my very best friends Madison.
Madi and I were part of a D&D group back in college with some friends, and we played through the Elemental Evil Campaign book. Through out college, I desperately wanted to be an artist/character concept artist, and I would draw pictures of all of our characters.
Of course, this was before I had ever worked with clients, and I just went off the base description Madi had given me of “A short, copper haired, half elf Druid”
I didn’t understand the importance of asking more questions, working with her to fully understand how Madi wanted Enna to look. So my first drawings were not quite accurate to how she had imagined her.
Enna is way too white. She is a sailor, she should have been much more tanned, Madi wanted her to have freckles, and she is wearing this weird corset thing, that I don’t even know where that idea came from.
In my original sketch (left) You can see she’s even wearing heels, which I don’t know why, other than at the time, I kind of expected all cool, sexy, hot elf ladies in media to wear heels because that’s what you see on TV.
Overall the design was not ideal, didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and frankly, I wanted to do better.
I still kept drawing the little scenes from our D&D adventures, and eventually I wanted to draw a big group scene. This is where Madi finally told me, “Hey, um, do you think maybe you could, I dunno, not make Enna white??”
So I drew her a lot tanner, but I stuck with the same outfit I already had, mostly because I was not creative enough to think of anything else. I think this is an accurate representation of a middle ground, because I was listening to my “client’s” wishes, and trying to be more accurate to what she wanted, but I was still learning at that point in time.
(I was also learning to get over biases and not draw everyone white, but lets not talk about that….)
What resulted next was I wanted to redo Enna for a birthday present for Madison, and this was also around the time I was really getting into Tarot Cards, and rediscovering Cardcaptor Sakura. So I created a tarot version of Enna.
To date, this is the most accurate version of Enna I had drawn. Madison was totally in love with this version, from the outfit to a more accurate skin tone. I still had a way to go, the face for starters, but that had more to do with my technical skill. In terms of character design, Madi and I agreed that this was the best version of Enna. This is what I based the most current version of Enna on.
The world in which Bardic Inspiration takes place is one of my own imagination. I believe I previously explained that these characters started as the characters played by my friends and myself in our first ever d&d campaign. I used to draw little illustrations from the campaign, and it was only May of 2019 when I decided, “screw it, let’s make a comic”
The original party, from left to right (Mira, Delsys, Ki, Arthurian, Vradnick, Lyra, Enna)
The problem is, I decided instead of setting it in the typical d&d setting of Faerun, and to avoid maybe being sued??? I decided to make up my own countries and world for these characters to live in. However I got really into it and made this giant ass map, when in all probability I don’t need the entire thing.
But I thought it could be fun to talk about this elaborate world I have created.
Currently the characters are on the island of Alend. It’s part of Torene, but the people of Torene consider it to be a collection colonies, rather than a unified nation. The people of Alend, derived from the native people of Halla, consider themselves to be their own kingdom, just under the rule of the people of Torene.
They have no unified leader, instead most cities have a mayor, or a law-master who is in charge of governing the city.
Together, the leaders of these towns and cities will vote to select a representative for Alend on the Torene Royal Council.
Torene is a collection of City States, but they all swear allegiance to the Queen. The Queen herself lives in Queenstown usually, which is the largest city in Torene, full of historical museums, artists, libraries, Bardic Colleges, and even a branch of the Eclipse Academy, the end all be all for mage towers and education.
Torene functions as city states, each city having a Lord, or a Viscount, maybe even a Queen or Duke of their own. But they all swear fealty to the Queen of Torene, and they all compete for a spot on the council. There are 12 seats on the council. One is reserved for the representative of Alend, and One is the Queen’s spot. The other ten are up for the Queen to decide who will be on her council. How she decides is up to her, sometimes it is through a tourney, sometimes she just picks who she likes.
Overall Torene is very large, and it has many cities, all or most of which I really hope we get to explore, because I have some plot lines for each of them. But the most important city is probably Windacker, where Lyra is from.
It’s largely a merchant and Fishing town, it along with Oceanspire is where most trade goes out through Alend and along the northern part of the coast. I don’t want to get too in depth into the history of the area, mostly because that will be shown in the comic, so for now, I will just say there is some political turmoil in Windacker.
For now though, this is the world that I have created. There is much more, and I didn’t even begin to go into talking about Nisia (One of my favorite places to come up with ideas for) I want to go through this whole world eventually, because it took a lot of time to make this map, and I think it’s fun to do world building!
( Does that make me weird? It probably makes me weird)
Anywho, I hope you all have enjoyed my brief explanation of the world of Bardic Inspiration
To be honest, my process is a lot of humming and hawing about how to specifically draw one thing, then drawing 3 pages at 2 am, followed by not touching my iPad for 2 weeks. But in terms of actually drawing out panels and characters, my process is usually the same for each page.
I have a google document with all of my major over arching plot points, and then I have smaller bullet points that detail out exactly what’s supposed to happen in each update. Usually I have a vague idea in my head of how I want things to look, and I write my notes based on that. I think I have at this point, at least 10 or so major arcs that I want to get through (who’s to say if I actually get that far) but I’m also trying to allow myself to have some flexibility. If I think of something that might work better, I usually go for that option, rather than what I have written. I also have a couple of people who proof each page, before I move onto the next one, for things like spacing and pacing, and even dialogue options.
Because I based Bardic Inspiration on part of a D&D campaign I played in college, I like to consult with my friends who played with me on how their characters think and would react to the scenarios, as well as to help refresh my memory of the events.
When I get down to the actual drawing stage, I usually space out my panels first.
As a general rule, I try to stick to 3 large panels per page, but sometimes I decide, eh, why not, and I put a lot of panels in the picture because I hate myself. I also try to break up the space, either with speech bubbles or smaller panels to give a close up of something I find relevant
Then I place all of my figures. The program I use is called Clip Studio Paint, and it has a very useful tool of these 3D models I can use to place and position my characters however I want. This helps me see them in the space, as well as know proportionally what everything should look like when I move onto the sketching phase.
Sketching!! Sometimes if I know what something needs to look like, or if it tends to be easier shapes to draw, I will skip over the sketching stage, and straight into my outline (don’t do this)
Line art: As a general rule, I move panel by panel when drawing, so all of the stages with the exception of panel placement, usually happen one panel at a time.
Next is character color. For all of my main characters, I have palettes saved of their flat colors and typical lighting shading colors. I color all at once, moving from panel to panel. Sometimes I take way too long with my coloring and shading, I’ll just get really into a cool lighting trick that I think is just really neat, and I’ll spend two days on a tiny panel where the detail isn’t really necessary.
Backgrounds are next. This is usually the last thing I do. Sometimes I will place foreground objects so I know how much of the characters I need to color. Clip Studio also has a very nice rock tool that I use very frequently, because I am sick of drawing caves.
After all is said and done, I will add speech bubbles, or little effects if I think it will help tie everything together.
I’m still learning, and I hope to improve with every update of my comic. I’m probably doing a lot of things other artists would say is crazy, and there may be better ways to do it, but this is how I draw my comics, and I enjoy what I’m doing.
So a couple times, I have been asked what is the difference between Elves and Half Elves, and there aren’t a lot of differences, and those differences happen to be pretty subtle! So I thought I would take the time to point out the key differences.
So, for starters, we have three characters who are of Elven descent: Mira, Enna, and Delsys. Mira is a High Elf (later we’ll meet elves that are not necessarily high elves), both Enna and Delsys are Half Elves.
The first main difference is the ears. I’ve tried to keep Half-Elf ears shorter, closer to human ears with a slight point. Obviously sometimes, when I am drawing them, they appear a little longer than I intend. Elf ears should be much longer and more pointed, they really only round off at the lobe. While I like the aesthetic of more rabbit like ears, or even the absurdly long WoW ears, I try to keep mine at least someone realistic.
The next difference is the eyes. I love drawing eyes, they are one of my favorite things to draw…. correction, I like drawing close ups of eyes, because sometimes it is absolutely impossible to get the eyes to match up and look correct, and then….. Art is hard….
Elven eyes look very similar to cat’s eyes, their pupils are vertical, which allow them to control how much light they can take in, acting very similar to an aperture in a camera. This is my way of explaining “tell me what your Elven eyes see” and allows them to see in the dark with Dark vision. I also give elves much brighter and more vibrant eyes. Mira’s are a deep purple.
A preliminary sketch of a Sun Elf
Half elven eyes are fairly similar to human eyes in all appearances. I do however, give both Delsys and Enna brighter colored eyes, in opposition to the dull grey of Lyra’s eyes.
I do want to talk briefly about the different kinds of elves in this world. Mira, as I mentioned is a High Elf, this more denotes the part of the world where she comes from: the High Forrest. Later in the story, we will be able to see more of the culture of the Elves from the High Forrest,
Enna is also part High Elf, but she is a sub variant that call themselves Sun Elves. This is mostly denoted in her coppery coloring.
Delsys is a half Wood Elf. Wood Elves tend to be more druidic, and avoid large cities, including elven cities. Their culture also tends to be nomadic.
That’s about all I have on Elves! I can’t wait to keep drawing, and dive more into the lives of my characters! The world of Bardic Inspiration is vast, and something I have been plotting for forever, so I am excited to share it!
So, because I am not a full time artist like I want to be, I do have to go to work on a regular basis. My office right now is pretty empty but that doesn’t mean I have less work to do. No! I actually have more.
I will be trying to get the next update of Bardic Inspiration out in early April. I do want to warn everyone that I did get Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and I am prone to video game based distractions.
Coming up is the final chapters of the Necromancer’s Cave arc, and then we will be going back to Vannet for some shopping. We will also be meeting two new characters very soon, and I will be posting character sheets here, both for our main ladies, and the two new characters who you have yet to meet!
That’s all for now, I love you all very much, and thank you for being even a little interested in my comics and my ramblings!
This blog will be where I share my progress for my Comic “Bardic Inspiration”. I will be sharing character designs, updates, progress on why it takes me so god damn long to update.
I’ll also be showing information about new characters, and answering any questions about the characters.