In which Varony finally catches a break…

…or not…

(EDIT 11/20 – Look for page 24 to be posted later in the day.)

Definitely not his day.

It’s not Varony’s day. Not the guy on the roof’s day, either. :\

I finally got to replying to comments on the last few pages – in case you were looking for a reply and didn’t opt for email notification.

Sorry for the delayed page. My home internet went down last night, and I don’t have a smart phone. Posting this from a coffee shop. It’s an adventure!

Happy Halloween!

EDIT: For Marvel fans – Vote on Top Webcomics to see a sexy Halloween costume pinup sketch featuring Kip and Ven!

EDIT #2: silly me, I forgot to add one last detail to the vote incentive. So if you voted already, click the link again to see the updated image (it’ll still only count as one vote for the day).

Wherein is answered the eagerly anticipated question of whether Claudia would hit a monster with glasses.

So far, so good with the computer fix. Thanks for your patience.

There are just a few days left in both the Chirault and Adrastus Kickstarters, if you haven’t checked them out yet. Both are great comics.

EDIT (10/16): No page this update. My graphics card died earlier this week while I was working on the perspective and 3D modeling for the next page, and I had to order a replacement. If all goes well with the new card I’m hoping to have the next page posted to Patreon on Tuesday and resume updates here on Friday.

A cool comic I found a little while ago that doesn’t seem to have gotten much attention yet: Nwain: The Knight Who Wandered Dream. It’s a fantasy story set in a very original-feeling world, and on top of having pretty art, every panel is actually a segment of animation. Some pages take a while to load, but it’s worth the wait.

Whoops.

Thanks to the Webcomic Alliance (and Liz Staley) for featuring us as their October Pick of the Month! Go check out their site for great podcasts and articles on all aspects of making webcomics.

Yeah… one of the key components for running around on rooftops = traction.

Our friend Liz Staley just launched her Indiegogo campaign to print Book 3 of her webcomic, Adrastus. If you’re a fan of mechs, badass heroines, or old-school anime with a modern twist, go take a look!

Also, I posted the watercolor painting for our new ad banner featuring Ranon on deviantArt (and Tumblr, but Tumblr resizes it funny). I’m (slowly) working on similar images for each of the other characters, too.

I was a little wary of that last panel, but the inking effects turned out pretty much just how I wanted them to (for once, hah). If you’d like to see a bigger version of the panel, I’ve posted it as a vote incentive on Top Webcomics.

As always, thank you for reading!

With profuse apologies to anyone who actually does parkour, haha.

But yeah, this is why Varony didn’t just shove Kip into his coat pocket (he does have one, on the inside) – the side of the knife belt’s a little less likely to get slammed into a building. Hopefully. Guess we’ll find out!

And just throwing out a note that Chirault‘s started their Book 2 Kickstarter! If you don’t already read Chirault, you should go check it out – it’s a very well done comic.

And while I’m linking things, Liliy of Wiglaf & Mordred just released the first novel in her new fantasy series, Obsidian of Ruby. I beta-read it last year, and it’s a fun read. Especially if you like dragons and badass lady knights.

First it’s dangerous fugitives hiding out in his inn, now it’s bounty hunters breaking his doors down. Innkeeper Guy’s having a bad week.

Quick, Varony, save the day!

Kip’s telepathic connection isn’t still open in the next-to-last panel; I mostly used that style of “speech” balloon to show that he’s still thinking at her as if it were. The usual “italics over a hazy white patch” for thought bubbles didn’t seem to have enough impact for the effect.

And if you’re wondering, no, turning into a mouse doesn’t mean the poison’s going to affect her more strongly – Morphus magic is “programmed” to compensate for things like that.

Varony problem-solving: throw walls o’ text at it till something happens.
His pep-talk skills could maybe use some work, though.

But hey, both the commenters who wanted an argument AND the ones who were voting for poison get to be happy! ;D

Varony is solidly in the not-wanting-to-die camp.

In which Kip airs her grievances.

Thanks for reading, everyone!

Yep.

“Yesterday,” for reference, started at the beginning of Chapter 12.

…probably not a land shark, then.

…. Land shark?

Welcome to Chapter 15!

End Chapter 14. We’ll launch Chapter 15 on August 25 (21st for early-update Patreon backers). Next week will be art updates while we’re getting the next chapter ready to go (but if anybody has fan art they’d like us to post instead, we’d be happy to feature it).

Thank you for reading!

…yeah, don’t feed the trolls, Varony.

To anyone who found us via the library’s Comic Con, welcome! We hope you enjoy the story!

I posted a new painting of Nashua (just for fun/practice, for once) to deviantArt and Tumblr, if you’d like to see it.

And the new Top Webcomics vote incentive is another of the sketches for ad banners that I’m working on.

Come see me and Liz Staley of Adrastus this Saturday in the vendors’ area at the Washington County Library’s first-ever comic con!

The con runs 11am-4pm at the Fletcher Library in Hagerstown, MD, and admission is FREE.  From the look of things it’s going to be a fun show. :)

alternate chapter title: In Which Varony Just Has To Ruin Things For Everybody.

Sorry, Kip. Maybe you’ll get lucky on the second date…?

New Top Webcomics vote incentive (been too long since we’ve had one of those) is a rough sketch for one of the new ad banners I’m working on. Half-naked elf is per Chezhnian’s request.

Sorry, Kip. At least the evening’s not a total loss…?

“Guys, guys, I got us a new party member! He’s clean and quiet and he won’t eat much and I have to check but I’m pretty sure he’s had all his shots! We’ll just be needing a tent… for the two of us…”

We just got accepted to vend at Comic Con 2015 at the Fletcher Library in Hagerstown, MD. The show’s on August 8 from 11am-4pm. Chezhnian won’t be able to make it, but I’ll be sharing a table with Liz Staley, creator of Adrastus (and renowned Manga Studio guru). It looks like it’ll be a fun show. Admission’s free – come by if you’re in the area!

When a tree creature wants to mate with another tree creature, he (or she) brings his (or her) intended a particularly challenging kill and says something along the lines of “Let’s create offspring together.”

When nofurs want to mate, it’s all glances and flowers and words that don’t mean what they’re supposed to mean and games they don’t even tell you they’re playing with you. And they seem to be at it all the time. So weird.

Varony has come to realize over the years that the human form the Genisai gave him is one that human females (and occasionally males) tend to find attractive. Sometimes he kind of wishes she’d made him uglier…

(Hallmark makes cards to say, “sorry, you’re nice and all, but I’m not really into your species,” right…?)

…

Thanks for reading, everybody. See you next update!

Varony is not the best fiddle player, but he tries!

Again, Chezhnian and I will be Livestreaming this Sunday starting at 6pm (EDT). You don’t need an account to watch or join the chat. I’ll be taking sketch requests (for Patreon patrons first if they want them, then for anyone else), and then maybe doing some digital coloring. The stream will probably go till 9 or 10. Come say hi and hang out with us if you’re so inclined!

We’re going to try doing a Livestream sketch session on Sunday, July 19th starting at 6pm (EDT). Patreon patrons will get first dibs on sketch requests (since the session is technically making up for having a month without early updates during the between-chapter break/medical hiatus), but everyone’s welcome to come chat (and ask for sketches after the first round). In case no one is in a sketch-requesting mood, I’ll have a drawing scanned to practice coloring.

Here’s the link to our Livestream channel for now. I’ll post more about it on Friday.

Aw, and things were going so well… He just HAD to bring THAT up…

Kip expressions are the most fun to draw.

The next page is up on Patreon (at the $5 tier).

They don’t have a whole lot of space to devote to prisons in Kalanthilas, so banishment is a fairly common means of punishment.

To those in the US, have a happy and safe Independence Day weekend!

Slowly starting to get ahead on pages again. My wrist still gets sore if I go too long doing something repetitive without a break, but overall it’s doing better (and I’m being nicer to it, I promise). I’m almost finished shading page 8 for the Patreon early-update backers (should be up within an hour or so), with page 9 inked and ready for shading. I’m also working on some new ad banners (the sketch for the Varony one was posted during the break) and finishing up painting the Patreon thank-you wallpaper. (Hopefully saying all that in public won’t trigger something ELSE untoward to happen.)

Have a great week, guys. As always, thank you for reading.

She doesn’t actually NEED to fluff her hair. I’m pretty sure “perfect hair at all times” is a Tu Naul racial trait.

And he might have taken her a little more seriously if she’d added “oh, and by the way, they’re actually sentient” to her argument, rather than just saying “don’t kill tree creatures, I’m friends with one.” But probably not much more seriously.

(Varony, for his part, doesn’t really distinguish “sentience” to quite the extent that humans tend to. When you live in the Old Wood, there are lots of things around that want to kill you, and very few of them care whether or not you can hold a conversation with them.)

“Here, have some painkillers” is probably the nicest thing anyone’s said to him all day.

I finally got a chance to sit down and reply to comments on the past few pages, by the way (for those who don’t have reply notifications enabled).

yeah, King Leius sure knew how to pick ’em.
though, to be fair, Varony’s had a really long day, he’s been in pain for most of it, and he didn’t exactly scour the bathhouse for mirrors…

(For reference, this is still the same day as the confrontation with the Genisai in chapter 12.)

Fun fact: a lot of the time you can tell how “human” Varony’s feeling by the state of his hair. Braiding it is sort of his “getting into character” meditation.

It’s okay, Varony, we’re laughing WITH you, not AT you……

Thanks again, guys, for all the support and encouragement you’ve been posting. I really appreciate your kind consideration and your patience. My wrist is starting to do better, slowly – it’s mostly a matter of paying attention and taking better care of it.  Which is a good thing in the long run. We have a lot of story to tell. :)

Thank you, as always, for reading!

So here you can see what my wrist took as the final straw.  As I’m going to be removing the between-chapter filler updates from the archives, here’s a recap for posterity: after about an hour of shading that dark background I started to experience carpal tunnel symptoms in my hand (this after several weeks of mild, off-and-on wrist soreness). So I’ve backed off and am working on rearranging my comic-drawing schedule and habits to avoid the three-hour shading sessions that probably played a big role in causing the problem. There may still be some slight delays – I’m going to be prioritizing my wrist health for the near future, since delays are better than compromising my ability to make comics at all. But for the most part I’m back on track. Welcome to Chapter 14. It’s going to be a fun one.

I LOVE tall ships, but boy are good reference photos a pain in the ass to find, since you need to see how all the parts fit together before you can recreate them on paper. I have a big folder of photos I took at the Baltimore Inner Harbor’s 1812 bicentennial event, but most of those ships were much bigger types than this one needed to be, and I couldn’t get very good photos of the smaller ships since they were cruising the harbor for most of the day. Eventually I found that the website for the Privateer Lynx (one of the ships that came in for the bicentennial, though I’d only gotten one or two photos of her) has really awesome, very extensive image galleries – so if you’re interested in that sort of thing or ever wondered what it’s like to be on a ship, go take a look. (I more or less loosely based this ship on the Lynx rather than drawing her exactly. It’s not 100% accurate, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out overall.)

End Chapter 13. Just like every chapter, we recommend going back and reading it as a whole now that it’s finished.

We’ll be taking an end-of-chapter break before we start posting Chapter 14. It’s another long chapter – right now we’re working on finalizing script edits, and once that’s done I can start storyboarding and laying out the pages. We’re planning to start posting Chapter 14 on May 26 (May 22 for Patreon early-update backers) – if it ends up taking longer we’ll keep you informed. I want to have a good start on the chapter before we jump into posting, so as to avoid delays down the road. In the meantime, we’ll be posting art updates at least once a week (probably Fridays), and on Patreon we’ll be updating with WIP stuff and progress shots for the new chapter (as well as the other extras like Chezhnian’s Tamuran trivia posts).

It’s been awesome seeing the range of responses Kip’s gotten this chapter, by the way. She’s a complicated character with a lot of room to grow… if the party stays alive long enough for her to get there. Here’s hoping. Special thanks to Chan, her creator, for entrusting her to us.

As always, thank you for reading!

This conversation went on a bit longer in the original rp. It was an interesting challenge paring it down while keeping the original spirit of the miscommunication as well as a dialogue that flowed organically. (The “so don’t eat me, and go wash up. Shoo!” was taken directly from the chat log).

Vote on Top Webcomics to see a penciled panel from the next page.

Varony does have some sense of pride… believe it or not…

Vote on Top Webcomics to see a penciled panel from the next page.

Vote on Top Webcomics to see a penciled panel from the next page.

pff, this “playing it cool and acting like we’re not wanted fugitives” thing is EASY. :P

Vote on Top Webcomics to see a penciled panel from the next page.

Well, glad that’s settled!

Vote on Top Webcomics to see a penciled panel from the next page. And since it’s a new thing, one more reminder that pages are being posted one update early for backers on Patreon.

With his bare hands, of course!

Top Webcomics vote incentive is a penciled panel from the next page. (The finished next page is up on Patreon.)

As a reminder, not all Tu Naul are Morphyx – those born with Morphus abilities actually make up a relatively small percentage of Tu Naul.

We are finally launching a Patreon campaign! If you’re not familiar with Patreon, it’s a way for readers to become “patrons of the arts” and support their favorite online creators with a monthly donation at an amount of their choosing, in exchange for rewards like early comic updates, behind-the-scenes content, and other extras. No pressure or anything – the comic will always be free to read right here. But if you’d like to help us out with comic expenses and promotion costs and such, take a look at our page.

Whether you choose to support us or not, I want to say thank you for reading our comic. It has been and continues to be a truly incredible experience to take this story that’s been clattering around our heads for six years and put it out there as a comic that people all over the world are reading, commenting on, and taking part in (and maybe sometimes tearing your hair out at) along with us, and it really makes us excited to share the rest of the story with you. I’ve probably said things along those lines before, but I mean it every time. Seriously, thank you. :)

Top Webcomics vote incentive is a preview of a panel from the next page. The whole next page is also available to read on Patreon for patrons at the $5 level and above.

In which Varony realizes the flaw in their cover story.

Vote on Top Webcomics to see a preview of a panel from the next page.

(Edit: fixed the speech balloons in the last panel – Kip’s supposed to be using her telepathy.)

Vote on Top Webcomics to see a preview of a panel from the next page.

It is just not purse guy’s day…

Nice entrance there, new guy!

(No new vote incentive this update, but you’re welcome to vote and compare the penciled preview panel to the finished one if you’d like.)

Happy (northern hemisphere) vernal equinox! After a week or so of spring temperatures, it’s snowing outside. =P

Just three days left in the Adrastus Book 3 Kickstarter, and right now they’re at 53% funded. So if you like giant robots and badass heroines who pilot them, go take a look! And please help spread the word if you know any mecha anime fans – I want my copy of this book. ;)
(Seriously, though, you should go read the comic. Once the story gets going, it’s a fun read, especially if you like old-school anime. Liz weaves a good plot.)

Vote on Top Webcomics to see a preview of a panel from the next page.