More 2014 art! I might actually start posting these one per day instead of every 3-4 days because I want to catch up and finally start posting new stuff.

But for now, here is this thing which is probably the illustration that took me the longest out of any I've ever done. Looking back I'm actually not that happy with the outcome but at least it was a good learning experience I suppose.

Now onto a slightly abridged version of the original description:

 
This is a scene from Harry and Jaymond's past. For those not familiar with them, they're the two in the bottom centre - Harry being the human on the ground and Jaymond being the colourful anthro with the spear. The creature behind them is Roxie, whom you may also recognise, but none of the others have appeared in my gallery before.

Among the various characters in this scene are four of my fictional species:
The digitigrade guards on the left are markattas.
The colourful long-legged people (including Jaymond) are norbatruls.
The short folks with pitchforks in the bottom right are tylads.
The big macropod-like dinosaur things (including Roxie) are skilyg (not "skilygs", the plural is the same as the singular).

Someday I'll get around to making species reference sheets for these and the other species seen in the stories. BUT TODAY IS NOT THAT DAY.

The actual setting of this scene is meant to be when Harry was 12 and Jaymond 14, but I'm really bad at making characters look their proper ages so it's probably not too accurate. Anyway, at the time, Harry was a lieutenant in the Argonan Imperial Army (yes he was a lieutenant at 12, it's a kids' story set in a fantasy world so deal with it OK) and Jaymond was an apprentice hunter. Neither of them ended up sticking with those career paths, as you may be aware if you're familiar with their present-day selves.

Without boring you with too much detail about the political history of the land, let's just say that the norbatruls and tylads of Jaymond's home island weren't too happy with the island's government of the time, and in particular with the way said government enforced its rule through military power . . . and as a result, Harry and Jaymond were not very friendly towards each other back then . . .

Characters and concepts belong to Adventurer