Tales from Sfera

some process

The comics in the previous post were made over a week ago, however I wanted to wait to post them so I could put up all of the Dragon Age II stuff together. This took longer than I thought though because the piece here took so very much work. I was working not only entirely on the computer, something I am not used to and which makes me more prone to want everything to look perfect, but I was also working in a colouring style I had never before tried.
I will now outline my frustrating, but ultimately successful journey of trying to draw a nice picture of my Dragon Age II party:

Alright so to start off I do a very quick sketch just to get the composition, the positions and poses of the characters. I was trying to get a kind of "V" composition going on with Hawkes Greatsword and Avelines sword and shield.

After the sketch I draw the lineart, and then redraw the lineart, and then redraw it again until I reach a point where I'm satisfied with it. I've added in Merrill's staff as well as made Varric a bit shorter (he is a dwarf after all). 

Now that the lines are done I do the shading in a nice, warm tone, adding detail and depth with the burn tool.

This is where I waded into unfamiliar territory: Going section by section I lay down ares of flat colour, then, like the shading layer, I go over it with the burn and dodge tool to add depth and highlights. It was at this point that I realized the afternoon I spent on the shading was made completely redundant.

Anyway I deleted the shading and carried forwards with the burn/dodge tool, then I made Merrill a bit smaller in the background, added in some minor details to Bianca, Hawkes sword and Merrills chain mail, then made the whole thing a bit taller, slapped on a background and, in the immortal words of Neil Buchanan, when you're done, you should get something that looks like this:

Reasonably happy with how it turned out.

some comics

I beat Dragon Age II last night and so for the past few weeks that I've been playing it I have been completely engrossed in the game. It does have a few flaws, all of which are picked apart by Yhatzee in his review. I tend to agree with everything that he has to say, but the world is so rich and engrossing and the characters are so well thought out that any flaws in the gameplay or story are, for me, made up for by the backdrop that it's set up against.

So anyway I liked the game and here are some comics.