Peace-In-Violence on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/peace-in-violence/art/In-Search-Of-Adventure-673385819Peace-In-Violence

Deviation Actions

Peace-In-Violence's avatar

In Search Of Adventure

Published:
1.5K Views

Description

So this submission isn't as polished as it could be, nor so advanced but that's okay.  This is something I drew in order to relax and unwind from the crime of honor cover ( here's a link if you're curious peace-in-violence.deviantart.c…) though in typical fashion ( at least in my case) it got quickly out of hand. I started by doing some rough sketches of man with a big ass sword ( an always appealing subject) and then then found myself adding a woman to the scene (A half giant by all appearances, at least until I started doing some neatening up). After that the picture felt terribly unbalanced, I mean all I had was a giant sword with a giant dame ( we'll ignore the man for the sake of the story) and so I added that waist high girl to contrast her over-sized companions. I threw the bard in because I had no one with a flamboyant pose ( this was before I dropped him into a pit of acid and turned him all skeletal) and that (for me) is a grave over sight. That pot came last and was born entirely from whimsy, an addition that cemented the tone of this piece. Fast forward a couple hour and I'd just finished adding all the clothing ( all except the woman's, she was kinda a work in constant progress), when I thought that to really push the air of whimsy by turning our bard into a skeleton. In the end, our friends up above became your typical adventure group: fighter, rogue, bard, and sorceress with her familiar (the pot).
Here's some quick bio's I threw together, even if you're not interested in that sort of thing I suggest you read Chorkerand's as its only half-bad ( the bard). Working from left to right...

Rowan Silverwood
Rowan is the last king from the age of gods ( the age of gods is a bit of complicated lore so I won't get into that), an age that ended centuries earlier. He was know for his intolerance of the schemes and manipulations circling him, often striking preemptively to excise real or perceived threats; it didn't matter if he or another noble, or even a commoner was the target of those schemes. This, of course, made him several enemies, one of which was too clever by half... This embittered man rode across the land to a distant corner of the world, a place where rumor suggested that a Witch lived. Rather than offering her gold, land, slaves or any type of bargain, he burst threw her door and offered insult upon insult. Finally, when her face had turned crimson from explosive fury, her offered her a single name: Rowan Silverwood.  It wasn't his name, of course, but she was young and inexperienced, at least by the standards of her people.
 As the man fled, she grabbed the book with her darkest magic and in a voice like cracking mountains, she lay a curse upon the man named Rowan Silverwood. It was the Curse of Violence. Every living thing, sentient or otherwise, that died of un-natural causes would give their unspent years to Rowan Silverwood and then he would share the agony of their death.
Note- this is not world wide, the curse only affects those who die within a certain distance of Rowan.

Ahlacia no-luck
Besides quick fingers and a quicker tongue, Ahlacia had nothing to distinguish her from the masses. He grandfather, on the other hand, was a man of staggering skill with cards. Some said that Kis'maat himself ( the god of luck and patron of the streets) would lose to her grandfather. His greatest feat, however, happened after his death, and thus none of the living ( save a bare few) know of it. As winter slipped into the old man's body and the last breath fled his lungs, Morgan himself  rose from the underworld to collect this most interesting of souls.  He found the old man's spirit seated alongside the body, his hands idly shuffling a deck of cards. Upon seeing Morgan, the old man flashed a checkered smile and offered the god five cards. "Care to grant me a final game?"
Morgan snorted. "Only if I shuffle, I smell altogether too much of Kis'maat about you."
Well matters continued as they usually do, and the two players  eventually came to a wager. A wager that Morgan lost. From that point onward, Death would not come for any of the man's descendants unless they or he himself wished it. 
Ahlacia has never won a game of chance in her life, nor has anyone in their family.

Chorkerand ( Chore- Ker-Rand) of the broken lute

In the entirety of his life, Chorkerand died four times. On the first occasion, his soul wandered down to the underworld like any normal person. He, however, was not ready to die just set, and so he snagged a lute from another soul. He'd heard that masterful musicians had so impressed  the Grim reaper with their playing that the Reaper had let then go.
 Thus when his turn came to be admitted, he slung his pilfered lute off his shoulder and began to sing and dance and play with as much gusto as he could summon. At first the grim reaper simply stared, but then the Reaper began to chuckle and then laugh and finally roar  until doubling over and beginning to gasp. Chorkerand, seeing a window of opportunity, dashed for the exit and returned to his body.
The second time Chorckerand died, he found himself bound in chain and thumped down before a glowering grim reaper. Now being to first man to  meet the Grim Reaper twice, he noticed something that no one else had. The Grim Reaper was a woman. Being a man of no slight charm, Chorkerand began flirting with her, heaping praises upon her and even composing some admittedly terrible poems that nonetheless brought a smile to her lips.  While his guards rolled their eyes earthward and feigned upchucking, his slipped his bonds and escaped a second time. As they pursued him, Chorkerand blew a final kiss to the Grim Reaper who simply shook her head while smiling, content to let him escape one last time.
When the ultimate misfortune struck a third time, Chorkerand found himself at the center of a parade. Furthermore, his guards had bound him from head to toe and gagged his silver tongue. Chorckerand was older now, though far from elderly, and he had lived a life he thought suitable. Certain of his fate this time, he merely shrugged and smiled, somewhat content. But as he approached the Grimp Reaper, she smiled shyly at him and in that expression he again saw something that no one else did. A breathtaking loneliness. Unable to do anything else, he smiled and winked at her, the former only visible by the crinkling around his eyes. She blushed and turned away, mumbling for his guards to remove the gag. Marginally unfettered now, he hopped forward and sat beside her, dropping the lamest pickup he could imagine. She laughed and so they continued. Ultimately he stopped flirting and simply talked, slowly losing track of time and anything else that had once mattered. He was content. But then a necromancer pulled his soul back from the under world, and thrust it back into his body which was now little more than a collection of bones. They say that the reapers howls echoed throughout all the lands of death.
 Decades passed and Chorkerand was forced to exist in an undead hell until a group of adventures freed his soul ( those up above minus one bard). This time when he died there were no chains or gags, just exasperated sighs and the odd, whisper of a smile. The Grim Reaper met him before the dais looking extremely flustered and quiet obviously concealing something behind her back. She presented him with a lute, handmade and barely held together by the strings. The moment he took it, she whirled around and pulled her hood down over her eyes. But he laughed and strummed it. If anything, he sounded worse than the first time he and she had met.
 His new friends were in danger, however, and he couldn't stay. Promising to return, he ran back to the living and proved to be the deciding factor in the desperate battle against the necromancer. Saying goodbye to his friends, he closed his eyes and embraced death for the final time.
The gods, however, intervened, capturing his soul as it rushed back toward the underworld. His constant traveling between life and death had frayed the barrier and they needed to intervene. They forever banned him from death and the Grim Reaper.
No more than bones and cloth and holding nothing besides a shoddily made lute, he came to a decision. He would reach minor divinity as the greatest bard in history and he'd do it with the lute that the Grim Reaper had given him and in so doing he would ascend, bypassing the curse of the gods.
Centuries passed and with each year the Grim Reaper grew more desperate, but then an old man shambled up to her dais and gave her a message. Chorkerand missed her. Chorkerand had eased his passage into death with music pulled from a broken lute, demanding nothing more than that the old man carry a message him him.   

Tsan'ya  Norrani 
Magic has a very simple principle, the consumption of energy in exchange for an equivalent effect. This law is concrete for mages, sorcerers, wizards and all of their ilk bar one, an incredibly rare type of magic user that generates magic power rather than consuming it. Tsan'ya is one of these and like all of her predecessors and all her successors, she's been hunted ever since her power manifested itself. Her's is an incredibly dangerous ability, for she generates magic at such an massive rate that unless she constantly burns away the excesses her power will build and build until it expands before her body's ability to contain. At that point it will explode outward and pour into the world around her, burning everything to ash as it sinks down into the earth and creates a new ley line. The first time this happened, her distant predecessor released so much power that it split the land and changed the geography of the earth. By this standard Tsan'ya is fairly weak, but she still has more than enough power to challenge the world's four greatest wizards.
Her power first manifested itself when she was thirteen, rising up in response to a landslide that would have killed a number of people. The people watched as massive boulders settled on the ground with barely thump and we're then shuffled to an out of the way corner. Many of the observers fell to their knees, lifting their gazes and their clasped hands skyward as they thanked the gods for their intervention. Other's glanced around, suspecting the truth. Only two, however, knew for certain. Tsan'ya, who'd fallen to her knees and now sat with both hands covering her mouth as violent shivers racked her body, and old woman who most thought blind. She was far from blind though and she proved it by marching up to Tsan'ya, grabbing the girl by her ear and hauling her, struggling, deep into the forest. The old woman hurled Tsan'ya against a tree and named her fool, idiot and then foolish idiot because magic was young yet and many considered it unnatural. She's warned Tsan'ya that further use of magic would undoubtedly result with the girl dying in fire.
The next three days passed slowly, the shouts of gratitude giving way before whispers of witchcraft. Then a village girl collapsed in the middle of the street, blood leaking from her nose as rivers of sweat ran from her brow. Whisper's became rumors and rumors became a letter sent to the nearest city, a letter calling for a witch-hunter. If they didn't act quickly, the poor child would certain perish from the curse laid upon her.
The witch hunters came quickly, men and women dressed entirely in white and determined to save the child even at the cost of their own lives. But over turn the village as they might, no one could find of sign of witchcraft nor would they ever. On the fifth day following the landslide,  Tsan'ya  arched back atop her bed while spitting blood and vomit. Her power had finally exceeded her body's ability to contain.
Nearly a foot of ash covered the barren ground in the aftermath.  Untouched but utterly alone and tortured by her guilt,  Tsan'ya curled up in this ash and began to cry. As she sobbed there, a shadow stepped over her. With a gasp, Tsan'ya whirled around and found herself starring at a young woman clothed in naught but ash and shoulder length hair. "Alright, which idiot told you to bottle up you power?"
Tsan'ya scrubbed at her nose and pointed at the old woman's house, at least it had once stood.
The woman huffed and propped her hands atop her hips. "Figures, well if we're lucky we'll find someone to rob on the road."
"W-w-we?"
"Yeah, you're coming with me. Rowan's not going to like it much but we ain't got a choice and you've got even less of on."
"W-wh-why are we ro-ro-robbbing someone?"
"Because I'm not walking butt naked into any city; this ass it too fine for that. MY name's Ahlacia by the way, what's yours?"
"Tsan'ya."
"Humph. You any good at cards? Cause I bet I could win that shirt off you."
Tsanya looked down at her baggy shirt. It'd barely fit over the woman's head let alone her shoulders. " Um alright..."     
     
  
            
Image size
1450x685px 546.85 KB
© 2017 - 2024 Peace-In-Violence
Comments20
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
sciencevsart's avatar
:iconprojectcomment:

This is the first thing I thought of when seeing the bard, and it seems to fit the story pretty well.

The next few things are a little more technical. A previous commenter has covered Chorkerand's pose, so I'll speak about the others': you've gotten a lot better at making them less static then your older works, which looked as if they were part of a panorama or a Renaissance painting. With wildly exaggerated and flamboyant stills, your works had a different mood that told a story, but did not have enough dynamism to convey flow. In other words, each of your pictures - even in comics - seemed made to be standalone pieces. This one, despite being a single piece, not only tells a story but is also more relaxed, with more natural poses (the sorceress and cursed man) that are believable and convey movement. The rogue is also exaggerated just enough to convey a lighter mood. I recommend experimenting more with natural poses, which may not be your style, but are well-suited for comics. Standalone pieces like this fit the pose template much better. I also noticed a pose like here and here; it's not bad, but it seems oft-repeated. 

Poses aside, your linework is fairly consistent, with the foreground objects in great shape, but the background leaves quite a bit to be desired. I personally skip out on the background if I'm lazy (and I'm lazy most of the time) but there is a shortcut for a forest background as seen here where it boils down to 1. Draw a few foreground trunks, 2. shade the background in the vague shape of trees. Remember, if the trees are tall, the leaves will be off-screen so it's a legit excuse don't judge me leaves are hard. Here is the full set of forest background tutorials. I would also recommend doing so in a separate layer with a colour / tone that is much darker or lighter than the main focus of the picture, so that they won't blend. Case in point: the dagger, which can be hard to distinguish on the first try.

Your face structure has improved since your previous works, which had the occasional jutting jawline and slightly overemphasised lips. Hands are par excellence and perspective is superbly done, although Tsanya's upper left arm looks a bit too long (nitpicking here), body structure is otherwise well done. I do have a gripe with the writing, since I'm very brutal when it comes to language, grammar and fiction-writing in general, but I'm in Project Comment for the visual art category so it should be left alone.

Good luck.