I was having a look through my old notebooks to find my old Dreamsong chapter 6 draft (which I did, by the way, and it was as bad as I thought). And of course, I got a little nostalgic seeing all my old art, and a little put out, actually, as it seems that my skill level has gone quite a bit down since then. But I thought it would be fun to share my trip down memory lane. You also get to see just how much editing goes into the lineart after scanning. Even though I prefer the experience of traditional art, digital art is necessary for me, just to fix the worst mistakes.

Anyway, I'm breaking it into two parts. To start, here are the pictures, and a few character development notes, from my AD&D gang.

Here are the original sketches for the chibis. I feel sad to think I can't even draw at that level anymore.

Raven, and a random Itachi:

Clarys. I had something of a background here. It vanished during the digitisation. Backgrounds have always been my weak point.

Ferys's chibi:

Zephyr's chibi:

A cute pic of Clarys and Zephyr back in their Valley days. I have several variations of this picture. I'm not sure why. Also, why does she only have one wing?

Zephyr's Magic Carpet. I think he looks better in the pencil sketch than the finished version, don't you?

Zephyr cosplaying as a fighter. Phoenix is squeeing over him, Clarys is all "nande ya nen" and Ferys is like, "What about me?!".

Clarys and Zephyr in serious mage mode. Serious Zephyr is just wrong.

Zephyr wasn't supposed to be pretty, but somehow he just always ends up so. We may as well go with it, right?

Clarys trying to teach Zephyr Seraphene. Although given their ages in this pic, he should already know it. I guess Clarys is just being bossy.

The two of them having fun again.

Ferys and Zephy chibis.

Space Zephyr. When I first showed one of my online friends a pic of Zephyr, she thought he was a space warrior. This picture isn't very good, but I like the idea of Space Zephyr. It suits him.

I called this picture "Dumb and Dumber".

Clarys and Raven. It was inspired by an example sentence in the kanji book. Clarys's arms need fixing.

Some old Ferys concerpt art. I might have traced the head outline from my How to Draw book. I can't remember. He looks weird.

Clarys and Alexander-kun. Clarys looks weird here. Alexander is supposed to turn up in the story at some stage. He has an interesting backstory that I can actually remember. He was Ryousuke's lifelong best friend, and so he was very close to the Naminari family. He is like a second father to Clarys. It seems at some point I made him Clarys's mother's cousin, but I don't know how that would work as Alicia was Graelian and Alexander is very much human.

So his thing is that he's super handsome (hence why I never show his face, I just can't draw that level of good-looking), and loves to turn on the charm, and the Valley females fangirl him like anything. Needless to say, the Seraphene men aren't too keen on him, so after Ferys and Zephyr made it to the Valley, his visits there tended to be brief. He's also a veteran adventurer, and many years ago, he'd completed a quest for the Faerie Queen. She was quite taken with him, and asked him to live with her in the Faerie Realm, but he didn't want to be separated from his friends, so instead she granted him eternal youth so she could squee over him forever, but the catch was that if he were to ever become romantically involved with anyone, he'd lose his youth immediately. So he is actually a lot older than he looks. I think he would be in his 50s at the time of Shadows.

He very rarely goes out adventuring with Ferys's gang, though. He is way more experienced than even Ferys is, so can take on much more dangerous quests. So they mostly do their own things.

Another pic of the two of them. He used to keep his hair shoulder-length, like above, but after Zephyr grew his hair out and the girls starting squeeing over his lilac locks, Alexander decided to grow his hair as long as Zephyr's. Zephyr doesn't care; the rivalry is entirely one-sided.

Clarys leaping into action. I wish I was good at drawing battle scenes, since their story is an action-adventure. I even have a book teaching battle poses.

Clarys giving Eddie a well-deserved ka-slap. I can't remember the exact story behind it, but she'd had enough of Eddie's casual sexist comments. I did plan on making this a finished piece. It just didn't happen.

Kuuya concept sketch. He hasn't appeared in any stories yet, but he's Clarys's dad's cousin. He and his sister Ren helped Ryousuke take care of Clarys after her mother died. I haven't really fleshed them out that much. They're healers, as most Seraphenes are, and they were meant to pop up at the end of Prescience. Kuuya was meant to be particularly skilled as a healer. I think I had them down as blond, like Ryousuke, but I'm thinking of making Ren orange-haired.

Edward Sr. This is how he is supposed to look. It's the only picture I think I've drawn of him actually looking as he was meant to. He came out terribly in Prescience, but I don't care enough to fix it. Ohhh, there's the communication gem! So he got one, too.

My original Phoenix concept sketch. Phoenix uses "boku" to refer to herself in the Valley ("boku" is masculine). The person who taught her Seraphene (which is essentially Japanese, because screw you if you think I'm going to invent new languages for all the nations in this story) wasn't himself very good at it, and so that was the word he taught her. When she arrived in the Valley for duty, she found out her mistake, but realised it was a good way to get people to talk to her, and now it's just her thing.

Clarys and Phoenix. Phoenix is asking Clarys what types of girls Ferys likes, and Clarys tells her he isn't fussy, any will do. Ferys wants a girlfriend, but his general manner comes across as quite offputting to females. Phoenix is the only one who feels attracted to him, but he finds her annoying. Beggars can't be choosers, Ferys!

Phoenix in chibi form. I should turn this into a finished piece.

Phoenix and Phoenix. I didn't name her after Phoenix Wright. The story of her naming is here.

I was having trouble remembering the reading for "yawn". Phoenix has a different outfit here.

Phoenix cosplaying as Clarys:

Ferys doing some action moves. And a weird, and terrible, sketch of Phoenix. I think I used a pic from the D&D4e player's guide for the pose. D&D4e is pants, btw.

Ferys being a good older brother. I do like those two together.

An old Zephyr concept sketch.

Oh it's so bad! It's not Zephy at all! My original idea for Zephyr was for him to be this wise, respected figure, who only spoke when necessary. I definitely prefer the current Zephy. There seems to be a hint of a blush in both my old concept sketches though. Zephyr's blush FTW!

Ferys challenging Eddie to drink something very strong. Eddie being Eddie obviously has to prove himself. You can tell this is an old one, because Zephyr has the black hair and is face-palming. Current Zephyr would be either worried or cheering him on. He's also wearing a cloak rather than a robe. Also, there's no Edward Sr and Raven. I'd like to turn this into a finished piece, but the background intimidates me.

Chibi baby Clarys and Eddie.

I believe this was going to be for Ferys's character sheet. I only got as far as making sheets for Clarys and Eddie. I started Zephyr's, but the art was really bad. I should probably get on with this. Ferys's legs look disproportionate.

This next one is kinda spoilery. This was a rough sketch of the end of chapter 2 of Prescience. Raven's legs need fixing. I'm actually glad I drew this, because I made ZERO notes for Prescience.

And finally, here is a page from Shadows. At the time I inked these, I had only recently started using Paint Tool SAI. Its vector tool was very different from what I was used to using with Paint Shop Pro. And so I just freehanded the lines in raster mode. I do actually prefer SAI's vector tool these days, but back then, getting the raster ink to match up with the sketch wasn't that easy (I'm still a little unsteady with the tablet), so things like the 10th panel in this sketch turning into the monstrosity that was the finished panel, happened a lot.

Well, that took a long time. That's all for this batch. Next time: the Dreamsong sketches!