AmmosArt

Molten Zoomy Lad

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So yesterday my good friend Ammo decided to take up residence on Gamepad.Club with so many of us that have moved there. This is particularly relevant to me because I have so many different profiles spread throughout so many different platforms that I have given her credit for the Avatar that I use most often. The thing is over the course of the last decade, Ammo has crafted for me a plethora of hand-drawn versions of “Belghast” from different games. There are so many of these that we have finally come to the point where I am retiring one. Above is the “Destiny Bel” that she crafted in 2017, prior to the launch of the game officially. It was assembled out of a set of armor that was at my time the favorite from what was available in the alpha and beta tests. Given that I mostly played a Bubble Titan in Destiny 1… I assumed that I would spend all of my time playing the sexy new Captain-America-style shield-throwing Void Titan. So I had her create a version of that with a simulacrum of my head… charging in motion.

Issue number one… I never spent any significant amount of time playing Void Titan. Mostly I never really liked the way the grenade options felt and the super was really bad for burn phases. Given that I never really did much in the way of proper group play in Destiny 2 apart from being carried through exactly one raid… I didn’t have much reason to run Void for Weapons of Light. Sunbreaker had both my favorite grenade and favorite super… so I largely spent most of my time playing that subclass. Then there was also the problem that after they started sunsetting content… and removing some of my favorite places from the game… I stopped playing Destiny altogether. It has felt weird to me that the character occupied such a prominent place in my blog banner, while I had zero plans to return to Destiny at any point in the future. Now watch that actually TALKING about it… will manifest a desire to start playing it again.

The thing is… I really still liked the motion of that character and how it rounded out the end of my string of characters. So it got me thinking about what I could use to replace it. For anyone who has not been around for all of the commissions, what you see in my masthead is my Lalafell from Final Fantasy XIV, my Hunter from Monster Hunter, and more importantly my Palico that is based on Kenzie… a cat that is sadly no longer with us but will always remain close to my heart. Then you have a version of my character from New World wearing the level 40-ish set of faction armor followed by my Necromancer in Reaper form from Guild Wars 2. Next up you have the only commission that I did not make… a version of my World of Warcraft warrior meets Twitter persona that my friend Tam Commissioned, with my PSO2 RaCAST looming behind. Lastly, before you get to Destiny, you have my Elder Scroll Online Imperial character wearing the armor set I almost always have on transmog. Then there are moogles sprinkled in throughout who stole my stuff.

It was around this time that I realized two things. Firstly… none of the characters that Ammo has drawn represent my constant addition to the ARPG genre. That part of my love for games is completely missing from my banner. Part of this is due to the fact that MOST ARPGs don’t exactly have a robust character creation system. A Diablo III Barbarian for example… looks like an old man with a diaper or a young woman with a diaper, and not much past that. Path of Exile while not giving you any control over your character model, does offer a bunch of cosmetic options that allow you to decorate them how you like. In that game, I also have a “zoomy” character in the form of my Righteous Fire Juggernaut I have now played for the last two leagues as my main. I spend most of my time ignited and shield charging through packs of mobs, and quite honestly… I feel like I love that design so much that I will probably create a version of it in every league from this point forward.

So I did what I always do and gathered up a bunch of screenshots and thrust them in Ammo’s direction and said “Here make this!”. This was a weird case because so much of this appearance is tied to one specific microtransaction pack in Path of Exile. Thankfully there is still a video showing off this pack in detail that I was able to supply to her as well. As she always does… she takes my inane ramblings and turns them into something functional. Over the last few weeks, she has been supplying me with sketches and updates… but honestly, she was on the right track with this one from the start. The only regret I have is that the scaled-down version that now resides as part of the masthead of the website does not necessarily do justice to all of the detail she put into this one.

So last night officially, I replaced “Destiny Bel” with “RF Bel” in the masthead. I think the placement works nicely. The only thing I wish I had now were some more small characters like the Moogles to patch over the transition of the left foot. At some point, I know for certain that I want her to draw me a Choya Pinata on a similar scale to the Moogles and maybe a Quaggan… but more specifically the one with a Turtle Shell for a hat. Huge thanks to Ammo for continuing to translate my madness into picture form. I think what I dig so much is that while there are stylistic differences throughout the years, they all feel like they belong together because they were all crafted by the same person. While I absolutely love my new Molten Lad, I do sorta think that the best of these will always be Necro Bel from GW2. It is the feathers that really go above and beyond with that one. I absolutely have the best-looking blog on the internet that very few people actually care about.

Ammo Illustrated Bels

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The extremely keen eyed… or those who follow me on Twitter might have noticed that recently the site masthead has been updated once again. For some time now there has been this tradition of getting my good friend Ammo to create artwork of my characters whenever a game grabs hold of me. This all started in part due to the very first commission that I ever had her do for me years ago for the seventh anniversary of this blog. I have noticed over the years that I attempt to create pretty much the same character or as close as I possibly can in each game that I play, and it is only really through looking at a bunch of my characters stacked up next to each other that this trend is obvious.

So for the Seventh Anniversary of Aggronaut I had her draw a bunch of my characters around the letters VII, and I even got this made into a t-shirt just for the fun of it. Going left to right you have my Warrior from World of Warcraft, my character from The Secret World, my Exo from Destiny 1 and beneath it my Bahmi from Rift, my Imperial from Elder Scrolls Online, and then finally my Lalafel Warrior from Final Fantasy XIV. Commemorating the release of Heavensward I decided to rebrand this blog and wanted to replace the Chibi Bel that had been adorning the site for awhile. My favorite of the above characters was her rendition of my Lalafel and I had her expand that into a full blown character that I could place beside the Tales of the Aggronaut logo.

I think the next commission that I had her do was a Twitter Avatar that I still use today of actual me as my Sunbreaker Titan from Destiny 1. Then my friend Tam did a commission of a bunch of us the way he sees us, which represents the armored version of me with bluebirds circling my head… to represent my online presence on twitter. It just sorta grew out from there with each time I got super into something… I had her craft another visage of my characters. Then over time I just kept adding them to the masthead and it began to slowly evolve over time.

So now we have the most recent rendition and going left to right we have:

  • Lalafel Bunny Warrior Belghast from Final Fantasy XIV.
  • My character from Monster Hunter World with my Palico patterned to look more like my actual cat Kenzie.
  • The Tam rendition of me that largely stands in for my time in World of Warcraft as it wears the tabard of House Stalwart the guild I founded and lead for a decade.
  • My Imperial Dragon Knight from Elder Scrolls Online in one of the glamours that I wear most often.
  • My RAcast from Phantasy Star Online 2, which is wearing the PSO1 armor set which is in honor of PSO being my very first MMORPG.
  • The newest addition my character from New World wearing the mid tier faction gear which I particularly like.
  • My Titan from the launch of Destiny 2 when I expected to spend most of my time as a void shield charging boy…. but ultimately fell back in love with Sunstriker.
  • Then a bunch of Moogles making mischief with my stuff… and I consider the one lounging in a hoodie to be pretty representative of me as the actual gamer behind all of this madness.

I am extremely happy with how this latest commission turned out. I apparently made it way more challenging than I expected to with that specific sword, shield, and the tricorn hat. This character also includes way more flowing cloth than is my normal for characters. Ammo did an awesome job of bringing to life my sword and shield character.

This is what the character looked like in game when I was rocking that appearance. We made some purposeful tweaks, namely I didn’t much like the belt and blended everything together to make it feel more cohesive. I really hope at some point that New World allows us to create skins out of pieces of gear because I have this set banked. This looks so much better than the actual Tier V set of heavy gear that you ultimately get as Syndicate.

While my level 60 armor looks considerably different, I think it is still very easily identified as the same character. I guess we will see what game captures my imagination next, and spurs me to do another commission. I have contemplated getting a refresh of my Lalafel, now that I am spending way more time as a Paladin than the other classes, and with it a slightly different glamour. I will likely wait until after I have finished the content in Endwalker to see if I am quite as enamored with that class as I am currently. Ammo does some phenomenal work, and has a very recognizable style… that you will probably notice art from other bloggers as well. If you are interested in getting your own creations done check out her web page with various contact details.

The Eternal Throne

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Commemorating the seventh anniversary of Tales of the Aggronaut I had my good friend and artist I keep commissioning to draw stuff for me…  make this collage of “Bel” characters.  If you are so inclined you can even get it in T-Shirt form with all proceeds going to the artist and zero to me as intended…  I have one hanging in my closet.  The characters pictured present my characters scattered through a bunch of games that were important to me…  from left to right:  My World of Warcraft Human Warrior, My Blades/Shotgun character from The Secret World, Middle top my Exo Titan from Destiny 1, Middle Bottom my Bahmi Warrior from Rift, my Imperial Dragon Knight from Elder Scrolls Online and finally my Lalafel Bunny Warrior from Final Fantasy XIV.  As much as I love this image…  it was sort of awkward to work with over the years and mostly just has to be used as is to adorn my blog’s sidebar.  It also made me shift how I actually requested commissions from Ammo, given that each of the individual characters was drawn as you see them and could not be pulled out or separated from the total image.

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Instead these days when I put in a commission for her to draw something, I pay for her to do something in a way that allows me to break the pieces apart and use them as I need for various other purposes like adorning the website, as channel art or turning into a social media avatar.  The individual comissions are more expensive but I also sorta like to make sure Ammo keeps a steady flow of commission work…  as does Tam who has in total commissioned way more than I have.  While I did not have time to deal with this prior to the anniversary post because work has been crazy… and I was up until midnight on Tuesday night dealing with an outage…  I did finish up the intended collage masthead last night and added it to the site.  The logo itself is a little off center so that it is effectively centered over the block of text and then the image extends out over the sidebar as well.  What you see before you is a bunch of individual commissions that I have composited together.   I am exceedingly happy with how it pulled together even though it greatly increases the vertical space of my masthead.

Once again I will talk a bit about each of them going mostly left to right.  First off we have a more updated version of Bunny Samurai Belghast from Final Fantasy XIV wearing the second version of artifact gear and wielding the glowy Palace of the Dead axe.  Next up we have my default visage from Monster Hunter world wielding the Nergigante Longsword and with my Real Life and in Game Palico Kenzie decked out in my favorite Baan Astronaut gear.  Then in the center-ish we have a commission that Tam actually did, with the goal being drawing how he sees me…  the advisement to Ammo was something to the effect of “Warrior Disney Princess and Friend to Woodland Creatures”.  So you have me heavily armored…  and then lots of buckles to make fun of my love for gear with extraneous straps and buckles…  the House Stalwart tabard to represent the guild that I started so many years ago…  and finally woodland creatures in the form of a bunch of bluebirds that play dual symbolism of me and my “birb” friends in my backyard and the fact that I am always on twitter.  Next up you have my Elder Scrolls Online updated Dragon Knight wearing the cosmetic gear that I generally wear in that game.  Lastly you have a Destiny 2 Sentinel Titan shield charging like a badass…  but with a head that is based on a comic book version of my actual appearance.  Last but not least you have a bunch of Moogles that I commissioned to represent the fact that I am part of the Moogle’s Pom Community team even though I have not streamed in eons due to anxiety issues.  The extra chubby one with the beard and a hoodie resting on the logo is the one that actually represents me.

There is an awful lot of symbolism packed into a single image… and while it is extremely busy… it also represents this blog.  I am constantly swapping between games and also giving a dose of myself with each post.  The only regret that I have and this is minor…  is that I sort of wish that I would have had Ammo draw Kenzie and Monster Hunter Bel completely rather than as a single composite image.  I could have faked it out… but it would have been nice to have Kenzie overlaying the logo a little bit to add more depth…  but I am not sure if it would have made visual sense.  I kept the placement of Bunny Bel and Titan Bel in largely the same location as the previous logo more or less on purpose because I thought they made good bookends.  The only problem is…  I already have a bunch more character commissions that I want in my head…  so I fully expect this to evolve over time.  Before I plug Ammo again… I feel like I have to state once more that when I post links to her stuff it is completely unsolicited and it is just the fact that I am a huge patron of her creations and want to spread the word.  Saying that… here comes the link dump of where you can find her (thankfully I already did this in a post and can just copypasta).

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Finally for some actual game related stuff…  I have been playing some Star Wars the Old Republic of late and I am currently blaming Pete since he was talking about it on twitter.  More honestly I think I am being influenced by what I have called the BlizzCon Spirit, but I feel like I need to explain that.  Each year around BlizzCon time I find myself getting enthralled by Blizzard products.  If I am not currently playing World of Warcraft at the time of the convention…  then I find myself playing it shortly after.  Similarly we recently had a whole bunch of news come out of Star Wars Celebration in Chicago…  featuring a trailer for Star Wars Episode IX, a trailer for the Respawn game Jedi Fallen Order, and some leaked footage from the Disney Plus Mandolorian Television Show.  All that goodness in one place has produced a BlizzCon spirit like effect in me…  which is not shocking given that I went through a massive renaissance of Star Wars the Old Republic leading up to the release of Force Awakens.

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When I last played I managed to push my way through a bunch of the new content and through the entire Fallen Empire campaign.  However Eternal Throne was brand new content and I did not hang in long enough to actually start on it.  So Tuesday night after getting home from work… I patched up the client and started working my way through the Knights of the Eternal Throne expansion.  I am taking it pretty slow, not playing a ton on a given night with me just finishing the first chapter last night and moving into the second.  Every time I return I forget just how good the storytelling is in the game, and how much it reminds me of Knights of the Old Republic especially in the more modern single player incarnation.  As a cherry on the top it came out yesterday that Kathleen Kennedy confirmed that they are looking at doing a movie set in the Old Republic era…  which gives me goosebumps at thinking that maybe just maybe some of my favorite characters from the KOTOR series will officially enter the canon.  I still very much love Star Wars and even though Last Jedi mostly landed flat for me…  I am looking forward to the end of the Skywalker Saga and seeing what they do from that point onwards.  I am hoping that we see a huge cinematic saga centering around the large set pieces of the Old Republic setting.  Bioware has created so many great characters that are just waiting to be realized on the big screen.

 

Ten Years of Tales

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Ten years ago today I installed WordPress for the first time and decided to put digital pen to paper and roll out the mat of Tales of the Aggronaut.  At that time I doubt I had a thought in my head about it lasting anywhere near this long, nor growing into what it has become.  Tales of the Aggronaut was not my necessarily my first blog…  and the previous incarnation is floating out there still in the ether never to be spoken of again.  However this blog combined a bunch of things that I was already doing…  namely writing big walls of text.  I was one of those folks that would come into a game forum and write big posts talking about my feelings about this thing or that thing… or offering support and advice to those who were in need.  I was a fairly active member at the time on the Argent Dawn server forums, and a lot of the people that I am still in contact from those days I met amongst a bunch of lines of text…  and the eventual IRC server that spawned from it.

Ten years seems like a momentous number, but I just could not really think of anything I wanted to do to mark the occasion.  At this point many days it is a struggle to get myself to log in and make a morning post, let alone come up with some grand promotional scheme.  Instead we are going to have a quiet birthday…  which is in truth how I prefer to celebrate my actual annuals these days as well.  There are many blogs out there that are far longer in the tooth than this one, but I think well aged blogs is a bit of a rarity these days.  I know my own blog roll is full of blogs that have gone into the sands of time…  that I just cannot bring myself to delete.  Blaugust has helped quite a bit, and I am planning on this year potentially outshining last year now that we have a fairly active Discord community surrounding it.  I am thankful for my regulars…  and I hate to say this because it sounds vain but…  anytime I get a notification saying someone liked one of my posts it is a little burst to keep me going.

The other interesting thing about the passage of ten years is just how different my life has become in that time.  When I started this blog I was a dedicated Guild and Raid leader making our way through the newly released Ulduar raid and struggling a bit at the jump up in difficulty between it and Neo-Naxxramas. I was also completely devoted to World of Warcraft and namely playing the Warrior class.  I also had very definite opinions on raid tanking and various other aspects of the game… thinking myself to be some font of knowledge for the community.  I had opinions and I was very willing to share them damn the consequences…  because I was in my early thirties and thought I had figured an awful lot of things out.

Now we scan forward to today…  and I am a leader of people with fifteen people under me as I transitioned from development to management.  As a result I am not longer leading anything at all in my off time and doing really good to be a member of literally anything.  While I still organize people around concepts and ideas…  I have tried my best not to be the one actually holding the reins.  While I used to raid on a near nightly basis…  I can’t bring myself to even commit to raiding once a week for a few hours.  Where I used to spend every night grouped up with other people and usually on voice chat…  I can’t bring myself to communicate with other human beings regularly once I am officially off the clock.  Where I used to think I had a clue what I was doing…  I am now in my 40s and know that I know next to nothing about most topics and it seems like I am imposing myself when I share my opinions on things.  While I am still very much an MMO player…  I find myself playing them all effectively on solo mode or maybe with a very small group of people in tow.

Another thing that has changed significantly over the years is how much of myself I am willing to put into these posts.  I’ve shared with you deaths in the family, times I am struggling with one thing or another, and things that have happened that brought me joy.  I shifted my writing style from being disconnected from the readers…  to trying to invite you all into my world for a few minutes each morning as I write.  I can’t say that anything I write about is actually interesting, but it is at least grounded in the reality of where I am and what I am doing at a given moment.  The truth is I would be far more popular if I would simply stick to a single topic and become an official site for a specific game.  Those folks are the ones with the large readership, but me…  I am more of an acquired taste.  If you are not interested in me as a human being… then chances are you won’t be sticking around for very long.

All of that said…  I am thankful for the people that I do have that regularly check in on my world…  and it is shockingly a larger number than I ever expected it to be.  In ten years almost 200,000 unique individuals have visited Tales of the Aggronaut…  and while I am certain a good number of those unique users are bots because internet… it still means that I have introduced myself and my point of view to way more people than I ever expected I would.  During that time I have made 2028 posts including this one…  which would have been a larger number were it not for the fact that I barely made any posts during the first four years of this blog.  Every day however a few hundred of you come and visit my world and I am thankful for the company.  It makes me wish I had the fire to do more to actually push this blog and the disconnected community that supports it on a regular basis.  In theory I should be pushing a discord or a reddit or some other venue…  but instead I would just rather enjoy knowing the fact that I have a bunch of quiet users out there tagging along with me as I do things.

This isn’t exactly the triumphant post you make when you reach a milestone like this, but in truth I didn’t really want a bunch of fanfare.  You out there… reading this blog… and an important part of it even though you may have never actually interacted with me directly.  Even though I largely write like I am talking to myself, I do appreciate knowing there are people out there that care.  As far as words of wisdom to leave this post on…  I am not entirely certain I have any.  I guess we will see if Tales of the Aggronaut makes another ten years…  though at this point I cannot imagine what the world and my life will be like during that time.  My blog is as much therapy as it is a purposeful act of creation, and I thank you all for taking the time to listen.