The Blog of the Empire

This was a semi-industrious year. We have scenes from Amethyst Shards, The Lost, random concept drawings, and other interesting stuff. January Mainly part of logo redesign ideation. Carathoukiea First sketch, it feels more like of the Empire than the Spine Deconstructing shapes, playing around Starting to lock onto the 'Tree'-like shape. February Dark Mausoleum Entrance Meeting Space March Concept of Malcolm Zfnoc's body Bar of Despair Sepulcher of Shadows Inside Lower Level Malcolm Zfnoc cloak concept April None. May Ra'uw'la...

2021 has gone by both quickly and very slowly. This was a pretty…severely mixed year for me. Extreme lows, and pretty good highs. I would say that I’m very happy that 2021 is soon to be over. There were some good things that happened during it, though. Here’s a list of the top seven Spine related ones… #7 Tarot Minor Arcana Assignment This was a continuation of last year’s work on mapping characters/things to Tarot card concepts. I did Major...

This afterword is about, well, the burnout I experienced around the time I began Amethyst Shards and how it impacted the book itself.

Finally, Amethyst Shards is here in print form! It’s the same print style as Emerald Haze’s print copy. Had to be consistent for these two. The interesting thing to note is that, since this is the tenth book, the Tyra Tarkush Spine number is two digits. It stands out. The entire spine is bold and tight. Print spine Title Page First page of chapters It meets my approval so now you can pick up Amethyst Shards in print form from...

Since Amethyst Shards is (finally) out, I wanted to talk about Balon Zfnoctewoohi. Balon, Balon, Balon. Balon who is the only member of the Trinity and the One to debut mid-series (excluding Dien who is like an evolution of Hequera). Balon who has only been in five books (half of the series) thus far but has has dominated so throughly thematically and plot-wise since her debut.

As King was drawn by Erika Hollice, the same had to be done with Cyclone. The art drove what I wanted out of this commission was this piece of Cyclone looking awesome that I did many years ago. I wanted Cyclone with his Scythe, cape, and dark in a powerful pose. The whole package! And the whole package includes his helmet. His helmet…well, it’s been an internally contentious point for me since I moved on from LEGO as a primary...