I’m re-activating comments on the news now that the challenge is over. Please remain civil at all time in order to keep comment access opened.
Miles Vorkosigan doesn’t have an official design as far as i know so i’ve used the recently released comic as reference, though i’ve never read it:

Unlike Final fantasy, Berserk and Lodoss war, this serie has grown to be better with time. If you have never heard of it before, i highly recommand the (Audio)books.
It is the future, and the many colonies of mankind are spread across the galaxy thanks to a network of gates. Each nations settle their own world and through this unique cultures bloom on every world… until something happened to destroy the gates. Some parts of humanity are cut off from each other for centuries . Half teraformed colonies such as Barrayar fall to anarchy , technology is lost, medievalism is renewed. Until the day the gates are re-opened, with an invasion force in toe! The world of barrayar, armed with but horses, gunpowder and swords is brought back on the galactic scene. The thing is, the barrayans won the war against their alien foes. Though their world is to be forever scared with massives radioactives zone, they now spring forward with a huge leap in technology that would drastically change the fondation of their society. This is where Louis Macmaster bujold start her tale. Two entire novels of just prequel leading to the birth of the main character. An empire with a mix of old medievalism and modernism , now building their own ships and invading their own neighbor. Terrorism, war, tortures, babies being killed at birth, coup d’etats from the nobility to take down the regime, terrible mad emperors at the lead… It’s a harsh future yet beleivable. It is among all this that Mile Vorkosigan is born, raised as friend to the child-emperor, son of the regent with a legacy of warfare and a mother from a different planet with progressive thinking. The character has a lot of legacies to live up to except there is a hitch : he is stunted and cursed with brittle like glass bones. Too weak to join the millitary and thus unable live up to the Vor millitary class ruling his world, he set forth for a travel that he would change him. From weak reject, he would become a lot of thing through his life such as admiral of a mercenary fleet and hand of the new emperor. The books follow him from his birth to his thirties with childs of his own.
It is feel-good serie where you know the hero will always come out on top no matter the crazy odd thrown at him. Were Miles surrounded by heavy armed killers, he’d end up running them ragged by the end with victory in his grasp. While it has many funny moments, the books never stray into comedy, remaining beleivable from beginning to end. Which shows the deep experiences of the author Bujold. When i was young, before i ever drew anything, i would be leaving school to the public libraries and look at the books there. While what i’ve read most were Vampires mascarade, Shadowrun, Dragonlance and other such books, this particular serie caught my eyes. It had bright almost cartoony covers that was eye catchy to a kid. I’ve read many and then lost track of the serie as i grew older… until 5 years ago when on Audible i’ve re-discovered the serie once more in the audiobook form. All my memories renewed, i and Kite went through them all. They are better than ever unlike so many science-fictions that age badly as time passed. I feel personaly attached to the serie, after all it is the only serie i’ve read as a child that i still follow now. And just like me as the reader, the character has grown along through the books.
Bujold also wrote several other books in the same world setting. Such as Falling free, a tale about geneticaly modified space-born people with 4 arms and no legs. And Ethan of Athos, a tale about a person from a planet populated by only men, leaving his planet for the first time.(Think jaal’darya on a massive scale!)
Comedy, sci-fie, action, detective work, warfare, alternative history. it’s all there. I can’t praise it enough.
As for the influence it had on drowtales, it’s hard to say. Vor, Val, could be coincidence but it did strenghten the link in my mind. Multiple world with different culture is certainly an inspiration.

The challenge to do a daily artwork beside my regular work was completed. That’s a lot for me, and yet i’ve still managed to produce regular pages. The goal was to renew some creativity, which had been on a very low level after the difficult second half of 2011. I do not know if it helped but i certainly feel like i produced more. Now that it is over, i may not post a new picture every day as other project may need attention, such as the 11th anniversary special to come. but for now, let continue down memory lane. Which may another method to renew inspiration in a way.

Record of lodoss war. I remember in the early days of my access to the internet, when i was very young and a bandwidth of 5k/s was considered fast, i would seek across the internet for fantasy pictures of all sorts to fill my tiny 400megs hard drive. During that search i’ve stumbled upon Lodoss war pictures and later video clips, untranslated. They took forever to download and i had no idea what the characters said but it still looked very interesting to my younger self. So much so that the second colored picture i ever made was of Deedlit. My mother probably still has it framed in a basement somewhere… Back then i had begun roleplaying with friends and this anime/comic represented what these roleplaying session could look like if brought to life. It looked serious, well drawn, nothing like the cartoons i had known.
Later on, when i’ve built connections with fansubbers, i did finally get to see the whole serie. It was my instant favourite and would make me interested in arts. However a few years ago when i’ve tried to watch the first tv serie again with Kite, to show her what it was, i’ve come to the realization that it…looked pretty bad actually. Often the animation would be still pictures or barely had any motion. Which shows how some material can easily age as time progress. Regardless of it’s aging, it’s still an impact on me.
For as i’ve said previously, a person, especially a writer/artist is built from a collection of experiences and memories. Tv shows, movies, musics, comics, videogames, books, travels, people, love… In the case of what i would eventually created, lodoss war did had a strong impact on what my early view of Dark elves. I might have heard the word from a roleplay bestiary before or a glimpse from a videogame but this was the first time that i would actually know what the term meant. They were the darker side of the light humored elvenkind , working as mercenaries for an invasion force seeking to conquer the mainland of Lodoss. They were not outright evil, but had a much grimmer perspective on the world. They had both dark intent and nobility in them. Pirotess, the main dark elf lead of the first serie of book/movie fell in love for a human knight, sacrificing herself to save him and his ideal. The second serie had a dark elf vilain hunting down the group of heroes for a very long time, and actually kicking ass unlike most generic enemies. When compared to the main cast, i’ve found these vilains of Marmo more interesting than the heroes. A feeling that i’ve witness being mirrored in many of my own readers as they would often cheer for characters that would typicaly viewed as vilain, such as Snadhya’rune. A feeling that i can understand as i do try to avoid writting vilain in the stories. Only sides, points of views, of small and great conflicts.
Another impact is the visual of this world setting. Which would help define how i would eventually portray my dark elven characters. Their ears, eyes, cloth and weapon would help build my imagination. I did call Drowtales a “manga” for many years(though the correct term is graphic novel) and it’s quite obvious there is an easterner look to the Lath and Ssu of the drowtales world. Which you can partly thanks to Lodoss series for.
I say this but before someone belittle 11 years of work by making a leap in assumption, i do wish to stress the very important point : Nothing is made of one or two source of inspiration. Every creations out there is built upon a fondation of what came before. No human being can however hold every possible experience and by taking different path, by merging our own experiences/memories, we create something new.

Some pictures are downscaled to fit the news. Like the one below. Instead of making two different versions each time, the ones uploaded to deviantarts will have the intended resolution. I’ve put up the fourth week compilation up on sunday, which feature the pictures at 25% size, which is about the size they are on paper.

Yesterday i’ve spoken about final fantasy being a fondation in fantasy setting. Another important piece of work that influenced me is Berserk. Few know that before Drowtales, i was running an anime subbing site, it was little known and of little importance. With horrible 90s design because, well , it was the 90s. Videos were hard to find and took forever to download. Commercial translation of series like berserk were expensives, late and most importantly for someone living in Quebec : a rare import. Thus the grey market of fansubbing and fantranslation. One of the first serie i was fascinated with was Berserk. It’s first episode featured a grim , very dark setting with a low fantasy aspect. Strange and mythical things were things that are hidden in the darkness, that people fear but rarely see. A concept strenghtened as the story went back in time , in an era where magic simply did not exist except in some rare corners of the world. It could have been a normal medieval setting at that time with moderatly realistic armor, weapons, technology. With a vast cast that the author would eventually…kill one by one. Making for one of the most gruesome (and frustrating) anime ending ever done. While on the graphic novel side, this ending was but the beginning. A beginning to a world where few would survive , one of such being the anti-hero Guts. The serie had it’s fourth-wall breaking faery to occasionaly break the mood, had arts that grew in huge leap of quality as the story progressed and pushed the bondaries of what we’d accept to see in a story. I will not list them , just google berserk. One major turn point in the story is where Guts, now a young lieutenant in a mercenary army face his very first demon , Zodd, in a fallen castle. This is the topic of this picture. Where most humans would fall to the creatures of myths, he would survive by becoming something very akin to the demon he would be destined to fight.
It’s a gripping setting that still resonate with me nowaday. Chapter 10 of moonless was my attempt back in the days to try to give a berserk feel to a chapter.
Like final fantasy, Berserk have lost it ways across the years. Nowaday it’s rarely update and the japanese market needs for ever greater and more powerful foe have long made the story drift into the ridiculously overpowered battles domain, leaving it’s original story far behind. I was hoping to see the end of that story , but sadly i do not think i will.

Thanks to everyone who subscribed this month, your support is much appreciated. I’ve definitely noticed the effect of Saturday’s post!

When i drew that fantasy technology picture saturday it brought back to mind old memories. An artist, a writer, or anyone , is made from a collection of experiences. In my case, i spent all of my teenege years reading fantasy novels and playing videogames. When the week-end come, i would rent a game for 2 days and try to beat it before i had to return it to the rental place. One such a game was Final fantasy 6. I’ve beated it many times, i’ve explored every corners and watched it’s intro unfold countless time. Mechs walking through a snowfield toward a distant town, under a menacing dark sky. Already there i knew this would be different. Then starting as a character on the “evil empire” side, with overwhelming weapons, killing the rebels. Changing side, thus changing the perspective. Entire castles that bury in the desert. Airships. Advanced technologies powered with magic. Summons from other worlds. Many point of view to follow. And when i thought the game was over, high up on a floating island, the emperor falling to treachery, then the second half of the game unfold. The planet get ravaged and a post-apocalypse setting begins. To go around and find every single characters lost around the world to rebuild the group and face the bad guy. A bad guy 3 stories tall, overpowered and with a 12 minutes long music that progressively go more insane as it progress(go check the Dancing Mad track.) Followed by one of the longest ending sequence for a videogame at the time.
It did mark me and i still remember many of the scenes vividly though it had vanished to the back of my mind over the years. Now nearly 11 years after I’ve begun work on Drowtales, i can see where some of nt inspiration come from. Of course a single game does not build someone’s imagination but it was one of the milestone i think. It is one of the game that made me interested in the genre. All this have to be taken with a very important point: I couldn’t read english, nor speak it for that matter. I could only understand key words, enough to get by. Even with this handicap i did enjoy it. To me any bad translation from the original japanese would have been meaningless. It is also, to this day, the best final fantasy to my opinion. If tactic were to be part of the main serie, i would have difficulty to choose but it’s not, so…