The Quest Blog
COMMENTARY DONE
06/19/2022: Chapter 77 illustration + 20th anniversary
That's chapter 77 illustrated as well - i.e. all of them!
And with that, happy twentieth anniversary to The Quest for the Legends! On this day, twenty years ago, I started writing the original version of this story; today, age thirty-two, I've finished illustrating every chapter of the story, as well as putting up a new revision (the illustrations are now also viewable on each chapter's page).
Specifically, the new version, the "ILCOE patch" version, is the slightly edited version of the ILCOE I have been posting on the Thousand Roads forums over the past year. For the most part, these really are slight edits: grammatical errors or otherwise obviously non-native phrasing, editing some bits that really bothered me and could be trivially fixed in like ten minutes, and fixing some clunky sentences in chapters where everything isn't clunky sentences anyway. But I also did the revisions I'd been talking about wanting to do to chapter 76, if you still remember that. I did them in kind of a rush, because this was all on a deadline to get the last chapter posted today, and I may make further edits to it later, but at least, I'm a fair bit happier with this than the original version.
Finally, I drew some cover art for the fic for the occasion. There are a lot of things you could put on a cover for the story, and Mew and Chalenor may not exactly be the most representative, but they are behind it all, and as a bonus make for a more minimalistic, nicely-composed cover than some of the cluttered messes you could make out of this.
Happy anniversary, dear fanfic! I expect this site to be going largely dormant for now, until whenever I get around to the proper rewrite; maybe I'll do anniversary posts, I may continue to do anniversary art for the fic, and if I make those further edits to 76 I'll let you know, but other than that I don't expect there'll be much to post here.
Thank you all for being with me on this journey!
06/14/2022: Chapter 75/76 illustrations
As always I keep forgetting about posting these.
05/29/2022: Chapter 74 illustration
A very round Mew in the woods.
05/23/2022: Chapter 73 illustration
Semi-mixed feelings on this one compared to the art it's based on but in isolation, I like it.
05/18/2022: Chapter 71/72 illustrations
71 took ages and I'm pretty unhappy with it, 72 took three days and it's a favorite. Go figure. I think I just like close-ups more than wider shots with multiple characters.
05/08/2022: Chapter 70 illustration
This took ages but I'm reasonably pleased with the outcome.
04/29/2022: Chapter 69 illustration
I could have done Ryan for this chapter but May getting no sleep was just too tempting.
04/24/2022: Chapter 68 illustration
It's the kids who sit on the sofa and Carl gets a chair opposite them uuuuugh there is no reason it needs to be 100% accurate to the text but it still Bothers me
04/20/2022: Chapter 67 illustration
His eyes are just a bit too far apart, I think, but I enjoy him there in his Pikachu pajamas. Always enjoyed the "hand forgotten in his bowl of popcorn" line.
04/15/2022: Chapter 66 illustration
Drawing this, after my previous drawing of it, kind of drove home that I've made a lot of progress with poses. Essentially the same drawing (their different clothes aside), but this version of Alan's pose is a whole lot more expressive, isn't it.
04/13/2022: Chapter 65 illustration
Doesn't look suuuuper great but it went okay for its complexity, I think.
04/06/2022: Chapter 64 illustration
Went a bit more stylized with it; I'm fairly pleased with the overall effect.
04/05/2022: Chapter 63 illustration
It's Robin!
03/29/2022: Chapter 61/62 illustrations
I have made a script to calculate how many days I have left to work on each chapter art given my current progress; after chapter 60 I used it to find I had something like 5.3 days for each chapter art remaining, so starting with 61 I decided to commit to letting myself spend at least five days on each one - noodling to get it right in a way I'd previously been stopping myself from doing. 61 ended up taking six days, with that number of characters in it, but 62 four, so I'm still increasing my lead on the schedule, which is nice. Looking forward to hopefully being able to polish the rest of them more than some.
03/20/2022: Chapter 59/60 illlustrations
59 is kinda wonky like most of my efforts at the humans, but I like how 60 came out.
03/12/2022: Chapter 58 illustration
Clip Studio Paint added some new better grass and foliage brushes in the latest version and they made it a lot easier to make something that looks good.
03/08/2022: Chapter 56/57 illustrations
02/28/2022: Chapter 55 illustration
This shading was very weird to do.
02/23/2022: Chapter 54 illustration
Chapter 54. Rick is extremely ready for this TV interview.
02/19/2022: Chapter 53 illustration
Finally here!
Still kind of wonder if I should've tried to find a way to include May in the background that would've made sense, but eh.