DISTRESSED DAMSELS: More page roughs from the new introductory story for THE CHASTE AND THE CHAINED! (Patreon)

[Here's a link to our previous installment.]

With nothin' readily at hand for Distressed Damsel content right now, I decided to forge ahead with posting further page roughs for a new story serving as an introductory chapter of fantasy "romantic action-comedy" The Chaste and the Chained; plenty of DiD imagery in these roughs, even if the artwork's not particularly finished-looking.

After cranking out a scrawled first draft of page roughs and working up a finished script with dialogue and panel descriptions, I went back and recopied the roughs in the "quad thumbnail" format I've used off and on over the last decade or two:

 And here are the individual pages separately:

Note that this is a different take on the similar scene I drew myself last summer:

(Note the "elapsed worktime" numbers on the art-test page, BTW.)

To clarify, The Chaste and the Chained will have to be drawn by a different artist than me. Onward with the roughs:

...as we return to the "real-time" scene of the Elfmage carried off for imminent sacrifice by Hellspawned Abominations (or whatever), while the trailing Paladin fights with a Hellspawn rearguard:

Another "quad":

..and separate pages:

These pages revisit a similar scene I drew last summer, as seen below:

This scene of imminent sacrifice also kinda-sorta revisits a sequence I drew myself last summer in a series of failed art tests:

The Hellspawn in this story have a slightly different rationale for sacrificing the Elf, which involved opening a portal to another dimension:

(Note that I switched over to a pencil-based technique to speed up my production somewhat.)

As the dialogue will eventually make clear, those three portals are not the ones the bemused Hellspawned Abominations intended to open; cosmic shenanigans ensue in this story's finale, needless to say, as I close this post on a cliffhanger of sorts. Yay?

As for the roughs themselves, what belatedly dawned on me is that this format of recopied "quad thumbnails" is simply not viable in the (admittedly unlikely but) happy event that I wind up having to write multiple titles on a regular basis as well as writing and drawing another series myself. Blowing most of 2-4 workdays on this somewhat redundant work stage (which I wouldn't and don't get paid for, BTW) would be a luxury I won't be able to afford, even though I find the results pleasing and (usually) fun to work on.

Looks like I'll just have to run my initial, much "rougher" page roughs by the eventual artist(s) to save work time, which is more or less what I did for the first and second issues of other fantasy project Godplayers (aka Unidentified Fantasy Offering); note that I'll be previewing some of those roughs here later on this summer.

Anyhoo, a new and improved 31-page introductory story for The Chaste and the Chained is now pretty much finished and ready to roll (in script and page rough form, that is), so I can go bug potential artists about the project. Yay?

NEXT TIME ON THIS HERE PATREON: No idea, TBH, but something should be coming up in the next M/W/F slot. Let's find out together, shall we?