Re-roughed pages from THE CHASTE AND THE CHAINED's opening story! (Patreon)

So! 

A few months back, as part of my now pretty much abandoned quest for a "hybrid workflow" tried out via comic pages from fantasy test project The Chaste and the Chained, I reworked and expanded some of the initial story's page roughs.

The opening dialogue scene betwixt the Elf Mage and Human Paladin had already been expanded by a page or two during the "digital to analog back to digital" workflow tests; with these newer roughs, I lengthened the scene by one more page, as seen below:

and

Here's the earlier, shorter version, which featured the key narrative elements above in a single page:

Both versions of this scene end with the same page:

...before the story cuts back to the "cultists in a cave" scene, posted here months before in an analog-inked page:

I started work on tightening the next page's rough in Clip Studio Paint, as seen in the lower two panels:

And here's the final rough I had completed earlier in the summer, which I think I might have posted here before:

(Note that the story's page numbering has been scrambled by my expansion of the Elf/Paladin "strolling dialogue" scene.)

Not a SPOILER, I think, to state that the Elf Mage is reacting to a pleasant surprise "off-camera." Could rescue be at hand? Alas, rescue is unlikely to arrive in this particular story, I'm afraid.

Y'see, despite these recently revised page roughs, I'm currently unsure where I'm gonna go with this opening story from The Chaste and the Chained. The narrative as originally planned would've theoretically rolled onward for at least another 20-25 pages intercutting cultist mayhem with further "strolling dialogue" scenes. Problem is, I'm now quite thoroughly sick of this opening story, though I'm more weary of drawing all those g-d cultists than anything else.

Wellp, The Chaste and the Chained certainly did serve its purpose as a "test project,"  though the hybrid workflow tests all proved negative, in that none of the techniques I tried out seem to be remotely viable. Hope does exist, however, as I just now realized that I've never tried out a very specific art approach in the digital medium that might prove interesting and even workable, with that successful Rose & Lily inking test from earlier in the month possibly leading the way forward. (Well, possibly.)

So fear not, The Chaste and The Chained will return in some form here on the ol' Patreon, as I've grown to love these two wacky characters and their direly fraught relationship. Weirdly enough, The Chaste's ongoing (if theoretical) narrative has developed in some ways further and in more detail than original fantasy comic The Last Party, for which Chaste was supposed to be a test bed. So advanced are my 30-40 pages of story notes that I could, in fact, rough out and script at least two or three OGNs worth of Chaste material starting tomorrow; the problem, of course, is me actually drawing all that stuff.

That said, I'm likely going to be revisiting The Last Party for some upcoming art tests, as well as continuing further experiments featuring Chaste's starcrossed pair. Yay?

I'll probably put up one more "compendium post" that features all the existing pages from this opening Chaste story in sequence for your reading convenience, albeit in varying states of completion via a series of different art techniques.

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?

UPDATE: The monthly Exclusive Bonus Post for the $10 & $20 tiers has to go up this week, which prrrrrrobably means the Biggest Spenders will see that puppy on Friday. Not sure if I'll be able to put up one more September post on Thursday, as real-world tasks and a lack of "buffer posts" will make that effort more than a tad challenging.