End of Book I
At the end of each book, I plan on having an image of this map, with the party’s current location marked, and a trail that shows Andrea’s journey thus far. Though she may have already spent months on the road getting to Terival, her true journey is now only beginning, so the real starting point is Arra, Sleet, and Jonathan’s home village.
So now what? As I’ve said, Eryl is going on hiatus for quite a while. I need some time to work on other projects, but that doesn’t mean that Eryl is going to be forgotten. In fact, there will be plenty of Dark Wings activity before the second book begins. I’ll be reduxing the prologue and chapter 1 to make the art more consistent, and also to fix a lot of important plot stuff that has changed or needs more clarity. I also plan to write several short prose stories that delve into some backstories for the main characters and might fill in a few blanks that I had to leave out of the comic because of pacing issues. These stories will be set into illustrated pages, in much the same format that I’m planning to use for Laiyu.
The prose stories I definitely want to write are:
-A glimpse of Kira as a child, and his first battle
-Sleet and Arra growing up together
And possible stories I’m still mulling over include:
-An assassination Raven carried out that didn’t go to plan
-Someone very dear to Andrea in the past
And OH MY GOSH new vote incentive.
Oh my god. Is it… can it be…
Sleet can draw, and write! And better than me too, I must admit. That’s some seriously good hand-eye coordination for a creature with two usable fingers whose species don’t have advanced tools.
(Thinking about it, have wyverns been ever shown using any tools at all? I know they’ve been shown using their opposable thumbs, but can’t remember any tool use.)
The scene itself is very well done. It’s a 3D scene painted over, right? The whole thing is tied together very well, and I can’t but help wondering at the symbolic here. Sleet’s drawings suggest Arra’s friends, but the bloodied knife… I guess Kira is not going to be very merciful when he comes back for Kazu?
As for the short prose, that would be greatly appreciated. The webcomic format is great but often the story drags even for comics that are active daily. Some more insight to the world through side stories would be lovely.
Wyverns don’t naturally use tools, no, which is why you’ll rarely see them doing so. But Sleet was raised by a human, after all, and she taught him how to read and write. He has just enough dexterity to hold a quill or stick of charcoal, but writing takes more effort than for the five-fingered races.
Ah, actually this was painted from scratch! I drew a rough sketch and from there it was mostly paint and texture brushes and layer filters, just like all the other backgrounds I make for Eryl. The only ‘cheats’ I used were transform tools to give the map some perspective and to get the text in the book to follow the contour of the pages. I just put more time and detail into this one than usual.
There’s nothing too deep going on with the knife, don’t worry. I plan to have these end-map pages show objects and scenery relevant to events that happened during that section of the story, thus the childhood drawings Sleet did of his ‘family’ and Kira’s knife that Andrea stabbed him with.
I look forward to sharing more of the world, too! I’ve had to cut out a whole lot of detail and world-building for the sake of story flow and while the short stories won’t be going that in-depth into history and culture and such, they’ll still give much closer glimpses of the characters’ lives prior to the start of the story. 🙂
It’s dead, Jim.
Nope, it’s not dead! Just on a long hiatus while I work through some heavy Real Life stuff, update Ashes, and build up a boss buffer. It WILL come back eventually, seeing as I’m colouring a bunch of pages as I type this. 😉
Oh man, I got an email notification and thought, I haven’t looked at Eryl in so long, there must be a lot of new story to see!
Really though, I’m just glad you are still at it. It would be a great shame if the story were to die. No pressure though, as long as there’s still progress behind the scenes it’s all okay! Given that we are checking on it now over a year later, I’m sure people will be comfortable with waiting as long as there are signs of life 🙂
Yup, I’m still hard at work on it, even though there’s not much visible progress. Right now all my comic work has been slowed to a crawl because I’m trying to work through some very serious problems IRL that are taking up most of my time and energy. But once I have enough pages of the prologue redraw finished, it will return (and because I’m so BOSS at organising and planning, the largest chunk of finished pages are at the end of Chapter 1, because doesn’t that just make so much sense).
I’m also working on and off on the Kira back-story novella, whose manuscript is about 2/3 finished. I think that readers who are especially curious about more detailed world-building info will find it interesting as it goes into more detail about mages and magic, and also touches lightly on some of the culture and political machinations of the Veslian Empire. …
And it occurs to me that that description makes it sound very dry, but it’s in fact an action-packed adventure with samurai, magic, bloody battles, a farm-boy with too many secrets, and an overly eccentric elf who can’t shut up.
EEEEEEEEEE! I started reading the redux and had to come here to see more of the story. Your art has significantly improved over the years and I believe your page layout skills as well. I will continue to check in under the redux version and can’t wait to see how much more you develop! Thank you for sharing through all your health problems and I pray that you can continue all your great works!!