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This is the second round comic I drew for Hastilude, the knight-tournament OCT. The events of this round happen over the course of the night before the very last day of the tournament, where Zhun has a fatal encounter with his opponents-to-be.

Round 3 threw the remaining participants (all 4 of us) for quite a loop. I got paired with my friend Faust, and I was very excited to play around with his freaky doppelganger twins, but the rules for this round said we could make a 3 page comic only, and we were encouraged to go with the 'triptych' theme! That meant I had to get across an entire series of complicated interactions between 4 characters, all of which had prior history with each other, without the aid of any dramatis personae or filler pages or even room for more dialogue.

It is a texture overlay!

This is the second round comic I drew for Hastilude, the knight-tournament OCT. The events of this round happen directly after the events of the last round, where Zhun had an encounter with his first opponent of the tournament. These rounds happen in 2-week intervals, and I happened to be particularly busy this week, so the comic for this round is only 6 pages!

My opponent's character for round 2 was a noblewoman named Fermena Trusci, youngest child of a family of newly wealthy cloth merchants. Neither Zhun nor Fermena spoke each other's language, so it was interesting to figure out how these characters could interact in an interesting way! Fermena is also decked out in full chainmail, and I wanted this round to happen in the ring, so I had to find a way for Zhun to somehow 'win' in the tournament interaction. I'm glad that my opponent gave Fermena a brother whose backstory meshed well with my character's dad... they got to build up the narrative tension and parallels while Zhun and Fermena brought the action.

Thank you! I'm always trying to improve, but I like the line variation in my lineart a lot, so that means a lot to me.

In terms of thickness: the brush I use is very good at tapering, and I set the sensitivity on my Wacom tablet quite high. This is all 17pt wrinkles pen on CSP, you can get the brush as thin or as thick as that depending on how hard you press. But if you look at my lineart, you'll notice I'm mostly drawing straight lines anyway. What you're seeing is probably a mix of pressing harder for that particular stroke or bucket filling in small gaps for spot blacks.

As for thickening and not thickening certain parts... You're right, I'm not thinking about it too consciously when I draw, so it's somewhat 'feel it in your heart'. If I were to name it, I think it's drop shadows!

This is the first round comic I drew for Hastilude, the knight-tournament OCT I participated in last January. Each 'round' lasted two weeks and we were to draw a comic depicting an interaction between our character and the character of the opponent we were assigned, where our character proceeds in the tournament.

My opponent's character was Boketai, the chieftain of a small nomadic tribe and Nökhör of the rising Khan Temüjin - it was interesting to write a comic where my clear underdog character 'lost', yet still managed to proceed in the tournament because his opponent left the country entirely :) That's why even though my character is Zhun, I gave more of a focus to the opponent in this one.

Thank you!

Honestly, by the time I started posting original project stuff on my old art account, the reach was fine but I'd already developed some type of dopamine addiction to posting in fandom space for years. I think I was drawing more for instant gratification on social media than for myself. That kind of sucked because you know, I could only work on things in between my degree and the (not-art) jobs I have. About a year of not posting anything has been great in terms of resetting my priorities. I'm with Kindling Press which publishes indie comics/zines now too, so... it's time to really lock in and get some larger projects done. :)

I participated in an OCT (original characters tournament) called Hastilude themed around a tournament taking place in a 13th version France-adjacent kingdom this January.

Carved rhinoceros horn cup, in the shape of rooster ruiqin under the shade of trees