Hello wanderers,

work on the illustrations continues apace. I'm feeling a lot more confident in my abilities again and the number of false starts and sketches required before each final piece has decreased. I'll take you through the design process for each.

Destriers are creatures from Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, steeds which we at first assume to be analogous to warhorses (New Sun forces a lot of gap-filling on the part of the reader). In the fourth volume we meet some Destriers up close and it becomes clear that these are not the animals we assumed them to be (they're described as having spiked feet and fangs, and can run at speeds exceeding 100mph).

I am very fond of this aspect of the book, and wanted Vaarn to have its own destriers. Given the extreme overland speeds they're capable of, I felt that a traditional horse body wasn't suitable, and looked instead at greyhounds and cheetahs for the general body shape. Destriers are bred and trained exclusively for military use, so I knew I would draw one in full armour.

As with many things in Vaarn, I wanted to mix antiquity with the far future, so I looked at horse armour both historically and in modern times, especially riot armour designed for horses and police dogs. The destriers are going to be charging directly at artillery emplacements and gunmen, using their speed to close the gap and inflict devastating losses. I assumed they need blast and shock protection, so the final drawing has a mixture of plated and quilted armour (before anyone asks, these are far-future materials that offer considerably greater protection from bullets than contemporary fabrics). The helmet features closable eye-blinkers, as the destrier does not need to use its visual senses once a charge has been engaged. 

In contrast to the Destrier, a rather silly creature. I drew exactly one sketch which is maybe the most perfect drawing committed to paper. The final piece doesn't quite live up to that brilliant expression. 

An undead dog, reanimated by mycomorphic fungus. I quite enjoy that the 'pets' you can recruit are still mostly quite creepy and could easily be monsters instead.

It's pretty difficult to escape the shadow of The Last of Us when drawing these fungal creatures so I didn't  really try.

When it comes to Vaarn's synths, I really want them to seem almost alive rather than tin-can robots, but equally they're uncanny and in no way mistakable for flesh and blood people or animals. I ended up going for a greyhound-esque silhouette again, then abstracting the shape by subtracting areas where organs and tendons would usually reside. I added some logos and graphics to suggest manufacturer's marks, inspired by the art of Bungie's Marathon. 

Last but not least, the humble Glue Worm. These critters are smaller relatives of the large predatory Leopard Worms and Amaranthine Death-Worms. I looked at deep-sea invertebrates for this one. They're often quite 'hairy' for lack of a better term, which I used for this design. I would sleep soundly knowing this handsome fella is on guard duty.