BOOK ONE OF RABBITS

Their arrogance knows no bound. These lapin monsters look down on everyone outside of their den. They believe themselves righteous and good and believe all their neighbors in Nesterly to be cowards. Some even laugh at the idea that wolves are real! These rabbits feast upon the greatest of meals and they lounge about and READ! Reading, the gall! These lapin monsters even play board games while the rest of Nesterly says farewell to members of their family.

Farewell?

If you live in this part of the world of Vaelia, you must pay your taxes to the Wolf King. You live on His land, you seek providence under His shadow, so you breed well and give the king something worth a bite! These lazy noble rabbits have no care or concern to get busy with their primary purpose as a citizen of this civilization. While those not born with a golden spoon in their mouth rush and fight for a mate as soon as physically possible, these rabbit-shaped monsters have not a care or concern. Sure, knowing only their side of the story might make you soft, but do know that these lapin beasts have it coming. They may not go out of their way to harm others, but their very existence is a threat to all of civilization and they damn well know it and smile with pride.

Shed not a tear for them when their time comes, for if not them meeting the toothy jowls of fate, this world will end.

Welcome to their nightmare.

Racing Against Fate

This is a concept doodle from the book.

The crystalline forest called the Darklight Forest, lives up to its name. This petrified forest glows with an awe-inspiring passion. Blue, purple, and pink grasses litter the floor. Swollen translucent bulbs of starlight get ready to burst when the season changes. Glass trunks of crimson pulse as though the fluid beneath the facets get pumped through by a beating heart hidden somewhere within the stony roots. A twinkling starlit canopy dares a beast to climb through the dense number of razor-like leaves.

Seemingly impassable, poisonous even, this is the Wolf King's front lawn.

Furious Cecil

These lapin are anything but normal. Larger than a rabbit but smaller than a hare, these thick-legged creatures are anything but the species they represent.

Antagonizing these lapin creatures is a mistake of epic proportion. The potential threat will find their fur and flesh freezing over merely by remaining within proximity to a Thumper. One breath of the fluid air that accumulates around a Thumper-Noble and the threat's lungs will turn to ice. Swelling this frigid power far beyond a veil around their body, these lapin easily send forward the chill with mere willpower. Metal soldering will snap, vapor in the air will glimmer into crystals, and any organic material will shatter into dust.

This may all sound incredibly powerful but you should know, this ability to endlessly attract all of the nitrogen in an area is nothing compared to when one of these lapin puts their foot down. If an enemy ever wishes to know what the land looks like with a shattered bedrock foundation, coax a Thumper-Noble into drumming his or her feet. If their bones survive the vibrations of this quake and their flesh fares well against the freezing aura, the threat will certainly not survive the cannon shell that is the rabbit's foot as it missiles toward them.

Did you know that I pretty much had to teach myself how to make digital art? You do not even want to know how long this took me to figure out! (more than half a year)

I tried many tricks. I would finish an area and save and take a break for a few days, then I would come back and absolutely despise what I had done earlier, but at the same time, I would get an idea of what I would need to do in order to fix and improve the area I was working on. After a time of getting one small done at a time, I would sit back and admire that section. By the time I had finished the ghost-snake's left arm, I knew I was only at about 10% or 15% the way to completion and I had already put a month of effort into this project. I am still amazed that a guy with no official training in digital art could just wing it with paint brush and smudge tools to acquire this level of detail. This shoulder alone took me maybe 15 hours alone to figure out and I was not even done giving it all the smoke detail later on.

From the very first concept draft to the finished product, what a change! I never thought I would get a near-enough representation of the vibrant colors and motion I have going on in my imagination. My mind is full of colors and action, and to actually portray what I write about as a fully colored piece of artwork, yeah, I'm patting myself on the back. I deserve it. Yeaaahhhhh I know it's not "perfect" or "proportionate" but this is the best I can do while battling my depression and anxiety and during the corona shutdown, between shifts in a dead end retail job. BEHOLD! Less than 10 minutes of pencil drawing versus about 8 months of digital art learning!

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