I’ve been meaning to send out a mailing list email this week for this upcoming chapter (planning to sometime today), and I also had the random idea last night (or this morning?) to try drawing a small graphic for the mailing list, in general. This would need a lot of refinement, but jotted down the quick concept – it’s my sylvari reaper, Landis, sending off his “Mini Oxidecimus the Shadow Raven” with a tiny letter affixed to its leg, carrier-pigeon style. Maybe I will try to finish this sketch for Halloween – this is my favorite mini from the game, and it’s part of the annual Halloween festival starting next month.
I also feel like sending a few work-in-progress images for chapter 3 of the comic to the mailing list today – these will just be for the mailing list for now. And, like Landis sending out Oxidecimus, this email to the mailing list will go out later today!
I have this sketch of Malyck I drew last year, which I thought the composition might look interesting, and which I just haven’t had a chance to get around to doing more with it since. Largely because I since decided to draw a comic with him instead of doing more paintings, haha.
I would still like to finish this drawing at some point, though – indulged myself a bit this week and worked on it a little more. Just a portrait crop, for now.
I might not have posted the original sketch here – I wasn’t using this blog last year – just in case, here’s the original sketch below:
I will also show 2 bonus crops at the end of this post – one that I posted yesterday on Bluesky, and a bonus version here with color flats added.
Bluesky Censorship
Though before showing the images, I want to briefly mention the widening scope of censorship currently going over on Bluesky. This isn’t something that has only happened on there – it’s been a recent occurrence across several platforms in recent years. Most notably, for this year, are the Itchi.io and Steam bans. But before then, it was Patreon and Gumroad, as well as others. Bluesky, however, is a little unique in it is one of the most far-reaching among these recent censorship pushes.
These are important topics to me, but (at least, for now) too wide in scope to broach entirely in this post. I’d want more time to word everything properly, as it’d likely be an essay’s-worth of words, if I tried and tackled it now.
But what I want to note about Bluesky for the time being, is something I thought about posting there – and maybe I still will, depending on how this week goes, and if the admins there react to the backlash or not.
What I want to say is this:
General thoughts on the widening scope of censorship in recent years
Some years ago, it used to be widely understood that if you wished to protect the art you like, you must also defend the existence of the art you dislike – or even find repulsive. You are free to be disgusted by anything, not look at and filter it, and move on.
It was when people began forcing everyone to censor anything uncomfortable that lead to where we are now. Where multiple platforms are widening their scope of censoring artistic expression, which used to be widely understood as a key aspect of what it even means to be human.
Social platforms have spent years inciting the dehumanization of their own users toward themselves and each other. These recent censorship crackdowns are a reflection of this. Platforms would prefer censoring expressions of sincere humanity, in favor of the most banal visual products, aka “content”
Bluesky specifically
With that, I’ll just write what I posted there, with some expanded thoughts since I am not limited to a wordcount here (I’ll link to the social post itself afterward, if you’d like to see the original, much shorter thread):
I meant to post this at some point, and why not now. This is one of the concept drawings I did for the “Avatar of Mordremoth” we see in Chapter 1 of “The Harbinger’s Path” GW2 fan comic, seen most prominently on page 13 in Chapter 1: The Firstborn’s Stand. I drew one or two concept designs before this, and remember not being satisfied with those earlier attempts, until drawing this one.
I sketched the pages for chapter 1 first, and did placeholder drawings for my fan-version of the “Avatar of Mordremoth” in the early drafts. I believe I tried to figure out a design on the page initially, but wasn’t pleased with the results I was drawing. This caused me to try concepting some ideas for how this “mind-avatar” for Mordremoth might look like in the comic.
I knew I wanted him to be a foil for the Pale Tree – who Mordremoth initially impersonates during his infiltration into Trahearne’s mind in my comic. I am also partial to the idea – inspired by the Mordremoth canon design that Mordremoth “is the jungle” – that Mordremoth might take different forms for his “mind-avatar.” This is why I wanted him to first appear to Trahearne as the “Pale Tree” – as a way to try and weaken Trahearne’s resolve, by wearing the image of what is almost a deity figure for the sylvari people. This is also why, to me, my design for this version of the “Avatar of Mordremoth” is not necessarily the “final” or “true” form of him (within the lore of my fan comic).
This form, since I wanted to try a version which is more directly opposed to the Pale Tree design-wise, clearly takes much of its inspiration from the Pale Tree’s design herself. Many aspects are similar. I tried to add more malevolent features, influenced from Carlyn Lim’s Mordrem Commander concept designs, as well (mentioned in this post from last month). I will admit some of my drive to try this design is also because I found the canon design for the “Avatar of Mordremoth” in-game to be somewhat comical, haha, and always thought it would be fun to see different takes on this design that are a bit less goofy, and have a bit more of that dark fantasy visual flavor that I love so much in Carlyn’s Mordrem concepts.
Anatomy construction practice from imagination. It’s Corveil! Cropped because I probably won’t work on this more, it’s mainly a mental drawing exercise I wanted to try.
I’ve been meaning to send out a mailing list email this week for this upcoming chapter (planning to sometime today), and I also had the random idea last night (or this morning?) to try drawing a small graphic for the mailing list, in general. This would need a lot of refinement, but jotted down the quick concept – it’s my sylvari reaper, Landis, sending off his “Mini Oxidecimus the Shadow Raven” with a tiny letter affixed to its leg, carrier-pigeon style. Maybe I will try to finish this sketch for Halloween – this is my favorite mini from the game, and it’s part of the annual Halloween festival starting next month. 
