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.