There's a little less than a month until the second book for A Practical Guide to Evil comes out.
I got the first one, but please don't spoil rewritten book 2 for me. I haven't had access yet.
Anyway, I thought it would be funny to repost old fanart with commentary in the next month leading up to this. Let's see how long I'll keep this up. I got a lot to pick from. ;)
First up is the fanart that got me started on Guide Fanart. Even if i didn't finish all of these characters until I had done some other fanarts as well.
So much nerdery went into this. I tried so hard to take a systematic approach to how tall they all were from book descriptions. Part of me suspect this also was me kicking off strong, constantly frustrating EE by showing just how extreme the height differences really were visually.
My fave result of all of this now is the semi-accidental companion piece speculating how to actually draw Scribe if you had to show her in the story. As nobody remembers her face and her main distinguishing feature are the ink-stained hands.
This is nearly seven years old. From June to September 2019. Time flies.
God I love the trope of a character who refuses to stop sacrificing themselves even as their friends try to make them. Physically emotionally morally doesn’t matter it’s always so so good
Samuel Farron had learned the unfortunate lesson that he was always right, and grew indignant whenever Creation had the gall to disagree with that state of affairs.
Reposting old A Practical Guide to Evil fanart leading up to Book 2 publishing at the end of august.
This one I still adore. Cute woes back from August 2019.
I managed to hide quite a lot of easter eggs in Vivienne's loot.
The companion piece with "We have never had any descriptions of Hakram's hair. For all we know it could be long blonde locks with pink and purple streaks" still crack me up. He looks glorious.
Akua's little add-on doesn't quite work. And I learned the hard way, that it sounds cool on text, when Cat freezes a torso, and then rips out the heart. But... When said torso belongs to very well endowed Akua Sahelian, showing the aftermatch is an issue. Because logically that means there would be half a breast left and... Well, that's not a cute. Not now, not ever (I eventually cheated and made the damage larger removing the full breast).
I do like Akua's hair out of this. I was slowly learning to make hairstyles only African textured hair really can pull off while doing Guide art. Arguing those were the sort of hair styles the Soninke would use all the time (As a principle from day one, I refused to give any of the canonically gorgeous black characters straight hair. And every time another fan told me "but it has to be straight because they are meant to be beautiful" I got even deeper into that resolve).
Book 5 Sketchy Character Reference Sheet (Made for myself to use for other fanarts)
Counting down to Book 2 of A Practical Guide to Evil publishing on August 25th by reposting old fanart with new commentary.
We're at December 2020 now. And this one is pretty interesting in a lot of ways. It was never meant to be a fancy fanart, as much as it was meant as a reference sheet for myself, so I could get height, skin tones, eye colours and overall look correct while doing other fanarts. Basically, serving as dress up dolls, that would allow me to change the clothes on them, while figuring out what a character was wearing on a fanart.
Cut for outfit nerdery and the unexpected legacy that came from this.
All of them are in different book 5 outfits. Hakram especially pinpointing it to book 5 with his ghost hand. Although extremely underweight Masego is also a pretty good time stamp.
Indrani has a version with her leather coat and regular look, but it’s more unusual to see her partly dressed down, so I’m sticking to this one.
Vivienne’s pretty (not a) princess dress is the least sketchy out of everything on this. Clearly, I was on a mission to get the long medieval lines just right on her. She’s wearing a very late medieval fashion with high waisted belts, which seemed perfect for Vivienne. You can hide So Many Knives under that.
Akua’s look got a night sky on the fabric, as she's going full "Mistress of the Night" around this time. And is from the party where Vivienne got to verbally tear into her. Probably the most fantasy-themed of the lot, but in many ways also the most ancient styled being made by wrapped fabric. Or well, maybe it ties with Kairos on that.
I do like how I got Kairos made with a vibe that gives both ancient Greek *and* absolute monarch at the same time.
The Unexpected Legacy:
Back when Mango was getting feedback for the Akua cover for book 4, I posted this in the discussion (without Cordelia and Kairos) to point out how “one of these characters is moving in a very different direction than the rest of the Woe (and Akua) going by colour symbolism”. At which point Mango mentioned they were 90% sure they had given the artist this image as one of the references for the Akua cover.
That’s when I started to actually look at things, and well... Going by the original sketch, I think I’m a lot more than 90% sure the artist liked my Akua clothing designs and jewellery.
It’s not 1:1, but almost every single element is there in some form (except the night sky, which is much later in Akua's story). You can even see the horisontal wrapping around her torso.
Of course, after feedback and the artist making the sketch more detailed, the finished version moved more in its own direction. That’s what happens when artists are working on a picture over time.
Counting down to Book 2 of A Practical Guide to Evil publishing on August 25th by reposting old fanart with new commentary.
Made in June 2020 - I was Playing around with She-ra and the Princesses of Power art style, I think.
This picture is a great example of some of the personal guidelines I had set up for culture and clothing styles for Procer and Callow. Basically, EE would leave hints for historical inspiration in the series, and I would run with a lot of them. Slowly learning more and more about historical fashion in the process.
Cathrine is wearing high medieval inspired fashion here. Long lines, one piece gowns, big long sleeves that again are long lines with no poof.
For Callow in general I went with late medieval. The late part from the knights in full plate armour, because let's be real. That's not something you'd see in most of the medieval period and very iconic for Callow.
Praes had multiple cultures, each with their own styles, but for their overall "All of Praes" style, they were stealing everything from Callow. Because Praes! That's why you see me draw someone like Malicia in similar styles (I also liked the idea that Praes and Callow had ended up so intermingled fighting each other over a millennia, their visual culture had ended up looking alike).
Cordelia instead is wearing French/German inspired Renaissance styles. Dress has two sections (top and bottom), big skirt with the overdress split in the middle to show the gown below. And puffy sleeves. I hadn't quite yet gotten fully used to the way the stay would squish women's chest, idealising a nice flat front of the dress. So, the reason Cordelia isn't showing much off here is the art style. ;)
(Looking back on the Cordelia's Bad Day Comic, I was pretty horrified to see the silhouette being wrong, not properly flattening Cordelia's stomacher)
Procer in general I had feeding into Renaissance or even Baroque Northern Europe (The Fantassins are flat out fantasy landsknechts. EE is not even being subtle there). Often going for German inspired styles for Cordelia. No codpieces, though. That just goes against current ideas of basic decency.
So I had Callow wearing high medieval inspired things from about the 15th century. Why Procer was full Renaissance from 16th century. And it fits within the story with Procer just being more evolved than Callow.
Counting down to Book 2 of A Practical Guide to Evil publishing on August 25th by reposting old fanart with new commentary.
Me going crazy playing with height and body shape. I think it all may be from december 2020.
I started with Rat company for original book 1. Which also have an alternate version with some of the characters in different outfits (or lack of the same) or powered up.
Then I went to book 2, using the book 1 characters as a base, but changing things up where needed and adding new characters.
Then came book 3. Where I had learned my lesson in regards to Hune, and had her sit on the ground. Seriously, they have *tent* strategy meetings where Hune is present?!? Just how big are those tents?
You can see some of the characters grow taller from book to book if you know what to look for. Cat and Hakram also evolves a lot from book 1 to 3.
Some of the fun things that came from this first of all was making it visually obvious just how insanely taal the ogres were. Hune is not even among the tallest ones, and her mace is about the same height as Cat if balanced on the ground. These also generally made obvious that there’s some rather extreme height differences between other characters as well.
I tried balancing the very obvious roman army vibe and equipment with them also wearing chain and full plate. Which is from an entirely different tech era and culture. And show the three different types of armour used. It’s also a bit amusing how the main characters never seem to need protection from the sun with upper fabric, while running around in plate. But I guess you can go “Named” on that one.
I gave up after book 3. Not even attempting to keep up after that. ;)
