#malaiim

Bonus illustration for the prologue of the first story from my “Flow Within the Mountains’ Veins” webcomic. A dream couple, aren’t they? ;p

Click here to begin reading: LINK

Character concept sketches of my dorks from my webcomic, which you can read here. Old and new drawings mixed together.

I plan to update these and add new clothes/expression studies as the story goes along and/or I will draw something new that I can add without worrying about potential spoilers.

For now it seems only Nadi gets the best treatment, as I had to study her face a lot, and even update several years old sketches, all because I, in fact, had little experience with drawing round faces.

On top of that, some of her faces here are actually alternative, hoodie-less versions of panels from the prologue. I did those for study purposes, because it’s actually super easy to mess up the skull-face proportions with features obstructed like that... Thankfully I am getting a hang of that now. But it was hell at the very beginning XD. Just her putting her hair down changes the impression of her face completely.

With Mal, I learned I need to be wary of one thing. The more we draw a certain character, the more familiar we get with their design, to the point we draw some elements bolder and more exaggerated (If not outright flanderised). Even if we thought the design was finalised for years, they keep evolving. I didn’t notice his sidelocks are way longer in chapter 1, than they are in these portraits (which are at least 3 or 4 years old, even if colored only last year). This one is actually a small thing, as hair is something that grows, so as long as it’s consistent within a scene and a timeline it should be fine... But yeah, this is something one should keep their eye on.

And finally, with Renka... In past I drew her mostly in her adult form, but here she’s just a little larva, and I don’t really have a lot of still relevant concept-sketches for her little self outside of the comic. However, she doesn’t pose much challenge when it comes to drawing her, and her parents’ designs are very helpful with crystalising her design anyway. Actually, this is something I really like to do. Designing parents based on their adult child, then design the child... It is a circle of sorts.