This is an image from the main fantasy world that I spend my time world building for. I particular, this location and the two primary characters of the piece are for a video game that I have wanted to make for awhile. Hopefully one day it will not be just a fantasy of mine, but I digress. This little hamlet is located in an area called the Firkoan within the setting. It is the homeland of the Kankir, a species of small furry fellows of whom a few populate the image (as well as what I use for my own sona). The northern Firkoan, of which this hamlet is located, is also home to many spirits who live in harmony with the Kankir of the area. This is kind of an oddity as spirits do not usually live with other species as equals like this. They either lord over the mortal races as a local gods or are found in the wilds where they are regarded as dangerous beings that should be avoided at all costs. The spirits themselves are actually concentrated magical energy that has solidified into a living sentient form. As such they come in all sorts of crazy shapes, sizes, and colors. The Firkoan itself is a very high elevated land squashed between two massive mountain ranges. The southern half is a massive plateau while the northern half has deep valleys and forests that wind down from the northern mountain range. The valley itself has a relatively high level of magic that permeates the soil. This is not enough to cause any serious health effects, but has lead to slight mutations within the natural flora and fauna. One such mutation is that all of the flora have taken on eternal autumn colors even for plants (such as evergreens) which would normally not have such color variations. This has caused the land to to take on an overall orange-red hue which has mystified the surrounding civilizations and led to many local names translating to variations implying the land is burning at best or that it is dyed by blood at worse.

The two characters featured here (both of which have yet to receive names that I am happy with) are a spirit and a kankir that are best friends living in this tiny village. The kankir is the local master sorcerer's apprentice and she has been training under him for most of her life in order to eventually take on the role for the village. She is not very happy with the lot she has received in life though and spends most of her time hanging out with her spirit friend as they get into all sorts of trouble as well as explore the ancient ruins of a long extinct civilization that dot the landscape of the northern Firkoan.

This piece had a long troubled history and at this point I would classify it as more of an experiment and a piece of practice art over something I'm really proud of. I actually began drawing this a few years ago. It started as a sketch of the two character because while I had story and game mechanic ideas for them, I did not really have good visual designs for them and I wanted to work more on an outfit for the character. Of course me, being me, decided that I would draw a quick background to it. A background that ended up not being quick and while it had some really well done elements was not planned out well and created massive perspective issues to the piece. So it put it down and forgot about it.

Then around mid January of this year I decided to scan the image back in because I wanted some inking and coloring practice. I fixed up a bit of the drawing as I worked (mainly in the face), but fundamentally it was the same art I had done a few years ago and so I did not feel it was as good as my more recent drawings. Still I just wanted to use it for some coloring practice so that did not bother me too much. Then I made the mistake of looking at the background I had drawn and seeing all of the things I liked about it. I decided, well now that this is digital I can actually fix it.

This was a mistake.

I ended up pulling the two sides of the background apart to help fix the perspective issue, but that led to drawing and filling in everything in between and at the low level of detail I was working at it ended up taking forever. Still the perspective issues remained (although were far less egregious than the original) and at some point I became so frustrated that I gave up on it again.

It was only after finishing up the last picture of Fleet that I decided to reopen the picture after a month of sitting on it and decide to try and finish it up so it would no longer haunt me. I almost rage quit working on it again some time after adding in the little background characters that I had nearly given up on after the second time of working on it (and to be fair, trying to design the odd spirits was one of the more fun parts of this picture). Still, I did end up trying a lot of new things while coloring this and so while it was frustrating and there are a lot of issues with it that do annoy me, I did learn quite a bit working on it that I can take forward to newer and better pictures.