Some Guy's Art

So, originally, when I had heard who my assignment was, I was pumped. Marcy is a player in the game I ST, so immediately I went through my mental highlight reel for her March Lord and her shenanigans. I wasn't eager to have to be drawing a kangaroo familiar, but sometimes you have to move outside of your comfort zone. I braced myself, settling on a probable scene, then headed over to the Secret Santa journal to grab references. You can probably guess by the lack of kangaroo that I have not drawn a March Lord. I've known Marcy a long time, and I expected that some of her other characters might have been in the journal, but I didn't expect that the one character I knew literally nothing about would be the only one listed. Granted, most of the time for Secret Santa, you don't have context for the other person's character, but I was so close! There had to be some way I could glean some insight to make this gift super special. Of course. I know Marcy's wife.

Turns out, I don't know anything about this character because she's from a one-on-one game, but Marcy's wife knows who the other player is. She does some sleuthing of her own, getting in touch with that player, and sends me the description of an introductory scene, with the following image as inspiration.

(I don't know the source so sorry for that) Though, as described, it didn't really lean into the body horror stuff that give liminals their charm(s), it was too great of a jumping off point not to use. I thank the other player for providing so much to work with,

I should have known that the sanctity of Secret Santa would extend two degrees separate of anyone actually involved. Bad opsec on me.

And then I took entirely too long putting it all together. But, during all that time, my conspirators allege to have kept everything under wraps, so I had to give them all this credit. Frankly, it was Too Silly of a situation to keep to myself.

As thanks for reading, here's a minor alt that happened as a result of me not knowing where blue is on a color wheel.

I'm not sure if it goes outside of the spirit of the challenge, but this is a piece that I've been stalling on finishing for a long time (I think I started in... February). Seeing "location" as a weekly option was the kick in the pants I needed to redraw the mountainy bit for the nth time and call it a day.

If a part of you is thinking "wait, that's a pretty specific coastline", you'd be right. It's Rio de Janiero! I was looking at coastal cities to get ideas and when I saw

I knew I needed that topography. I like being able to provide location visuals to my players (even if I have to say "ignore the modern infrastructure")- I think it grounds the setting in a way that I feel is often neglected.

The Peacock Palace, Arakha Estate and Shrine of the Skirling Court, were all lifted from floor plans of actual buildings. Additionally, a lot of the little buildings came from some Clip Studio Assets +, +, + or Inkarnate (including the colosseum), but drawn over to give uniform line width. Actually, while I'm shouting out assets, I've fallen in love with this texture fellow, and this rock siding saved my bacon for the coastline. That was the last part to be finalized; it gave me so much trouble.

I think some day I'm going to update this with an alternate version where the blocks that have been blown up get repaired (Garlen is a bastard iykyk), but I'm more than a little worn out on this particular piece so off it goes.