Bellhop in Training

artfight attacks so far! been trying to play around more with my process this year :3

characters are:

1. ilya for @redspleen

2. gregor for @choppedmint

3. strahd for ludevika

4. uriel for @crouteann

5. elias for @endercoil

Strahd & Astarion, reimagined as a classic fantasy poster ✍️ Experimenting with old-school fantasy poster styles ☺️

Which crossover would you like to see next? ✨

Going through my personal challenge of trying to draw for the Misthoppers people. This time, a story in 2 parts. I saw one of the idea proposed to draw was with Gregor threatening Strahd with a candlestick or sth silly in the likes of it. So I went with that. Like in a VN where choices matter, camera focusing on Strahd ... and back to the "protagonist" after the choice to draw the weapon is done. Gregor's attacked was me trying to do a little looping simple animation with the dangers of Barovia being vaguely there in the background Gregor belongs to @choppedmint This Strahd belongs to @batsratscats. Please check her deviantart.

I work on oversized canvas, so these files maybe too big (3kx6k+ lol).

Drawn for Artfight 2026.

Curse of Strahd campaign where Strahd has to micromanage the overall biome of Barovia and frequently vents to the party about it. Bonus points if vaguely manipulating the local flora and fauna from afar is something he often uses to harm the party somehow.

Examples:

"Do you know how hard it is to remember which birds need to come in or leave during migration season?"

"The plants don't need sun to live, but apparently they still need water. If I forget to turn on the rain enough, then everything dies. If it rains too much though, everything dies. Honestly, the things I do for you people-"

"Yes, I know you're allergic to that. Why do you think there's so much of it in Barovia?"

"Hmm, it is strange that it always seems to be raining wherever your party goes. What a fascinating coincidence."

Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.

“Y2K came to nothing amirite?”

Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.

“Remember the hole in the ozone layer?”

You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?

One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those “it’s gonna be an apocalypse” disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.

The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.

And I still think that’s going to happen. I don’t know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope won’t help bring it about.