2 questions: did Veilguard kill your interest in making art for the first 3 games as well? (I'm not asking because I hope for any particular answer, this is just artistic curiosity from a writer to an artist!)
Also, since DA is not happening for you anymore, have you had a look at Claire Obscur/Expedition 33? I think it would be interesting to see the characters in your art style. But to be clear I think the best art comes from artists who draw whatever they want, so don't take this as a request or anything :)
Yes, it did! I'm not saying I'll never replay any of the games - DAO still has a special place in my heart and DAI was enjoyable enough that I'd probably be content to pop in, run about, and do Inquisitorial Errands for an hour or two here and there - but watching EA gut one of my favourite IPs was just rough.
Clair Obscur/Expedition 33 didn't feel like it was for me. I might come back around to it, but I've got other games (like the Witcher series, replaying Fable 1 & playing through the rest of that series) on my to-play list right now.
And because I can't help myself, I've full on just ranted under the cut.
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The way that they tried to PR-spin the layoffs was brutal: a smaller team would provide more "focus" (bullshit - EA is cutting their resources but expecting them to perform even better with less), they were having trouble keeping everyone busy (bullshit - also sounds like a Management issue and not a Writer/Dev issue), etc.
In my opinion, Dragon Age has never been a good game when it comes to visuals and mechanics. From DAO to DAI, those bozos have never, not once gotten the human form right. (Have they... ever seen tits before in person? What is with that posture and spine? Like whoooooo were they referencing because that person DESPERATELY needs physical therapy - old age will NOT be kind to them.) In that same time, they've actively dumbed down the magic system. ("Hey so your choices are Primal, More Primal But We Call It Elemental Now, Even More Primal But This Time It's Frostyyy, and Miscellaneous Spirit. What, you want to shapeshift? You want to bleed for power? You wanna fuck people up, psychologically, on the battlefield? Play through 2/3s of the game and maybe we'll give you one of those things.") DA2 was the same warehouse repackaged for 50 different side quests. Like, imho, a fucking slog.
What made those games playable and enjoyable, the most compelling asset of those games, was the writing: the world building, the companion characters and NPCs, and the plot all made subpar mechanics and visuals tolerable. I'm not saying it was flawless writing by any means. I have had plenty of complaints about the plot from DAO to DAI - like King Cailan's letters shouldn't have been concealed in a DLC, those should have been out and about so that people could contextualise Loghain's behaviours from the get-go and not "Folk Hero and General Mysteriously Turns Evil All of a Sudden" or the Inquisitor should have had to work a lil harder to earn that title instead of being given it and a sword after a sing-along session in the mountains. So, I'm not saying that the writing was flawless no notes, but it was strong enough that you emotionally connected to SOMEONE even if they were an NPC and a good chunk of the quests to do, books/codexes to read, etc. were a pleasure to engage with.
EA gutting the writers room is not trimming the fat. It's full on removing the meat and potatoes of a full course meal. We're left with crackers and cheese and EA's PR team has tried to convince me that that's a full ass meal when it's barely an appetiser. As a customer, I'm not blind. I'm not stupid. I can see with my own two eyes that EA does not WANT to invest in BioWare... so why should I want to invest in EA? That money isn't going back to BioWare. And I'm not an inexperienced gamer either - I know what a good game looks like. I know what developers are capable of when given the appropriate project time and resources.
Not to go full-on Capitalist(TM) on Tumblr.com, but why should I pay the same amount of money (if not more) for a lower quality product knowing that my money is not actually being budgeted to support the IP/franchise I just bought into? And why would I pay big bucks for a lower quality product when I know I can go elsewhere and pay LESS* for a far more rewarding experience?
So, yeah, EA just destroyed the joy that came from engaging with that fantasy universe. Fuck those guys.
* Admittedly, I paid the most for BG3 and that would be the same pricing as Veilguard. But IMHO, the experience of playing was worth the money! Larian's Divinity Original Sin 1 & 2, Owlcat's games were all <$30 or sometimes <$20. So I got to experience some PHENOMENAL games and storytelling for much, much less than what EA tries to sell me. The Yakuza games? Cheaper than Veilguard and a delightful experience. Got the Witcher bundle for cheaper than Veilguard. Pillars of Eternity - also a fun time - cheaper than Veilguard. The Trine series which features relaxing puzzles, beautiful backgrounds, and soothing music? Less than Veilguard. TINY GLADE where I get to build castles and pet sheep and listen to soothing music???? Cheaper than Veilguard with a small dev team that really cares about/loves what they put out. Honestly, should probably play that now and chill tf out.
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Have you played Dragon Age: The Veilguard? I think Rosia and Emmrich would get along fantastically
No, I haven't! I haven't had much interest in it, unfortunately. My friends who have played have said that it sucks dick for skittles and that's just focusing on the gameplay and not the maelstrom behind it: EA laying off literally hundreds of employees, including senior DA writers and devs with multiple decades of experience EACH at BioWare, while giving their c-suite a combined 60 mil. bonus that same fiscal year. (And it sounds like that shows in-game.)
I know a lot of people have followed me for DA - I drew fanart for what feels like a decade if not actually a literal decade - and I just wanna give everyone the heads up that I don't think I've got anything left in me for DA. It's hard to see, e.g., a character like Varric in-game knowing that they laid off the woman who built that character from the ground up. So, just as a heads up, if you're following me for DA in the hopes that one day I'll draw more DA? I'd abandon ship. No hard feelings whatsoever if you unfollow me.
And if you'll allow me to get on my soap box and yell (not at you specifically, just at the clouds, shaking my fist):
It's also becoming an increasingly hard pill to swallow a bad game when I know there are so, so many good ones out there that are a fucking joy to play. I've personally LOVED Larian's Divinity: Original Sin series, Owlcat's Pathfinder and Warhammer games. (I'm so excited to experience Dark Heresy when it comes out!) Hell, I even recommend going to BioWare's origins and playing Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. (Lukas Kristjanson, one of the people fired by EA, was the lead writer for BG1 + 2 and both of those games have phenomenal storytelling.) So, yeah, I'm not wasting time and money - (things I have precious little of) - on a soulless game from a soulless company with their soulless CEO who makes 260 times more than the median employee there. Fuck that shit.
Saw that anon hating on Rosia and felt compelled to tell you how much I adore her design!! You're ofc completely right that it's besides the point, but her being drawn as beautiful in a way that reminds me of like, actual human women I see in my community that don't always get celebrated in art means a lot!! Sorry this isn't anything that demands a response I just wanted to send some love your and Rosia's way because it's so deserved
[Anon is referring to this ask and this follow-up. Content warning for racism.]
Thank you! I should clarify that I do think Roisia's beautiful and I've said before that I aim to indulge in fantasies/create fantasy worlds that cater to and/or create space for characters like Roisia. So I very much appreciate the love & support!
I will also say, as an aside, that looking back at those asks, I wish I hadn't gone with my knee-jerk response of "characters should not be personally attractive to you to be worthy of exploration" because, frankly, I have some experience in trying to make crusty, unappealing characters (e.g., like Dragon Age's Solas reimagined as a vagrant or Ambrocius who is my emaciated vampire Skyrim OC) and having those attempts be met with... inexplicable desire (to no one's surprise but my own: they sexualised that ole man).
So I wish that I had zeroed in on the racist and misogynistic undertones - Roisia and Brii are the only characters of mine who have ever been the subject of negative anons... and I've been here since 20-fucking-12. The anon called Roisia ugly, mediocre-looking, and basic, but none of my character designs are that special. Bodran is just a sharp-faced elf with a circle beard. Bree is just a tall skinny white woman (or elf, depending on the universe) with eyes that are a little too far apart. Morowa is also a Black woman with a shaved head and no other noticeable unique traits beyond a love of funky earrings. Lucelion is a walking, talking replica of any classical Greek/Roman statue and that's literally the most derivative design I think I have in my lineup. This makes Kelkemmeran my "spiciest" designed character because... he has scars and is blind in one eye???
I am just not someone who goes all out with character designs. (Do you know how agonising it is to draw intricate tattoos and scars? From different angles?? Or remember how many earrings Bodran has one one ear but not the other because it's all based on ONE head from Morrowind??? I dropped his teal blue tattoos/war paint SO quick.) So the idea that Roisia was being singled out as a ugly, mediocre, basic, etc. character should have been a fucking clue that if this person supposedly liked my work enough to be familiar with it as they said they did then they would know that Roisia is not an outlier when it comes to me designing characters. They would have expected nothing less. So I wish I had identified and called out the misogynoir more explicitly because that's what it was at the end of the day.
have you ever drawn elucien ? and if not can you please draw them :)
You've got to understand that I'm in this fandom on a very, VERY thin tether. I only give a single solitary fuck about Nessian. If Nesta and Cassian weren't endgame, I would not be here now. I have been asked to draw every character and ship under the sun so I might as well make a generic ACOTAR PSA to nip this in the bud. Sorry in advance that this sounds harsh--it's truly not you--I've just had enough of people asking me for free art that, judging from my ACOTAR fanart history, they would know I have exactly 0 interest in drawing. So here we go:
I'm not going to draw what interests you for free.
I'm not going to wade into fandom shipping drama with 0 dogs in this race by drawing what interests you for free.
If I was interested in your fav character or fav ship, I would have drawn them by now.
If I have not already drawn them, then it is from a lack of desire and not a lack of opportunity.
If I DO draw characters you like, then no, I will not draw them in the particular way that you want me to draw them. Those are your preferences, not mine. If I shared your preferences then I would have drawn them that way in the first place. (NB: most of the time people want me to change the way I draw X character's hair. E.G., Eris has canonically long hair, and I draw it short because it's fun and I can. I don't mean stuff like whitewashing.)
I don't give a flying fuck about canon. (Although, tbqh, neither does the author, frankly. She can't be bothered to quote her own words correctly in her own damn books.)
A friend started getting into dragon age and fell down the Samson rabbit hole REAL HARD. I tossed your account to them and they've been thriving on your stuff
If they like reading fanfic, then they need to read @marokiya's DAI works like yesterday. (Here's the link to their writing on AO3 - Samson/Trevelyan filters should already be applied.) Post Tenebras Lux would be a good starting point, and if they like that there's more to explore. The banter is top notch.
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Hello! I love your ACOSF arts! Absolutely brilliant! Thrilling! Amazing! That being said i havent actually read ACOSF :( Do you think its worth reading? Like for Nessian content and just in generaly? Or maybe there its better to live in denial just believing all your AU are actual truth?
Personally, I wish I hadn't read ACOSF. IMO, it was a lot of pain for very little gain.
If you want to know how absolutely unhinged this book made me, I wrote an essay (with spoilers!) about it on AO3:
The Taming of the Shrew, Or, How Do You Solve A Problem Like Nesta?
How do you get your art/character interactions to be so expressive and organic? I've loved your art and ocs for years and keep coming back once in a while to skim through your Dragon Age and Elder Scrolls art to get inspired, so I wondered if you did specific art studies to get to where your art is right now?
Thank you for the compliment! I've got three answers (or exercises) for you and you can take them as you like 'em underneath the cut.
They are in order from Most Annoying to Most Pleasing.
The Noble Still Life
My parents threw me into art classes at around 6 years old. I don't mean to imply that that somehow makes me a better artist out of the gate--it truly doesn't--but it does mean that I've been doing still life studies for a sad but significant portion of my life. And as much as I hate drawing stupid fruit arranged with other stupid shit on stupid pieces of fabric, still life studies were really helpful across the board and especially with developing a sense of how shit works. ... Even if I go on to blissfully ignore what I've learned and draw fabric folds however the hell I want and put shadows wherever I damn well please.
The Ye Olde Master Study
As part of secondary school, we were also trotted out to local museums and parks and whatnot and told to just... have at it. So a lot of my sketchbooks from that time are filled with studies of library-lion-this and portrait-of-supposedly-important-man-that. Then, back in class, we were asked to imitate the old masters. Old Masters studies are really fucking fun and some of my favourite commissions have started out with phrases like "Can you recreate this Benjamin Constant painting but with my character as Empress Theodora?" or "How about a different Constant painting of Theodora?" I also do master-ish studies with my own digital paintings, like this one of Samson and this one of Bree. I think it's a fun exercise because it pushes me out of my comfort zone even if the end result doesn't look all that sophisticated or much like the original.
The Desperate Scribbles of the Human Form~
I should put gesture drawings and anatomy studies before master studies because in theory you need to know how to draw bodies before you start trying to paint in imitation of Caravaggio. (Now that I think about it, a deep knowledge of fruit is also essential to Caravaggio... but I digress.) In my art class, gesture drawings were more about flow and movement than it was about your unnerving ability to draw an elbow. Our teachers broke us using the Boiling Frog Technique, which was to say that they lulled us into a false sense of security by allowing us to sketch the person modelling for 10 minutes. Then 5 minutes. Then 3 minutes. Then 2 minutes. Then 1 minute. Then 30 seconds because they were sadists. It is unfortunately an effective way of teaching 1) how bodies move and 2) how to capture the essence of a pose rather than the strict reality of it.
But I really like anatomy studies and I really, really like drawing hands. And more hands. And even more hands. And then some more hands just in case. And then, just to shock and surprise everyone, a torso. A good chunk of my sketchbook is just me drawing faces and hands and eyeballs and hands and faces and sometimes feet when I can't remember how ankles work.
Other Weird Tips That Don't Quite Count As Studies:
If you don't wanna sketch in a museum or go to a park or stare at a stranger's ankles to figure out how ankles work, then go pull up fantasy stock photos on DeviantArt or take a photo of yourself and then get to sketching. That's what I do!
Watch a shitton of animated films. There's a fluidity & theatricality to how characters move in animated films that I love. Sometimes it seems like every inch of the character is expressing the emotion they're feeling. I find it personally inspirational even if I feel like gnawing off my own hand every time I attempt to draw my own frame-by-frame animation.
Study film. I studied film very, very briefly and a wee snippet of that was studying storyboards (as in: in library, with book) and doing some storyboard art projects (as in: at desk, with sketchbook). I treat every comic I do as if I was storyboarding the animated scene from the disjointed animated film in my brain and then polish it up to make it more readable/enjoyable.
Top ten peeves with "medieval" fantasy armour, and/or top ten Actually Quite Practical things that the time period had in its armour that you feel are underappreciated by a modern audience?
I’ve been drawing Dragon Age armour for the past 5+ years and hating much of it so I’ve decided to specify my pet peeves for their armour designs. 🙈
Obligatory Disclaimer: I understand that the DA franchise and the DA devs have absolutely zero (0) obligation to stick to historical armours and understand that they deviate from historical sources however referenced intentionally to create their own unique fantasy blend. I’m taking the piss.
Jane’s Top 10 Pet Peeves with Fantasy Dragon Age Armour:
Side Note: DA armour is “mediaeval” in that from DAO to DAI, the DA franchise increasingly borrows bits and bobs from the Middle Ages. Examples of this include Blackwall’s gambeson and the splint-styled armour that Alistair wears. It’s a bit of a hodgepodge--Alistair’s “splintmail” armour would historically predate the more traditional plate armour you also see in the game. Splinted armour was a bridge between mail and plate, which was well-established by the early half of the 15th century.
ANYWAY, here are my pet peeves:
1. The overuse of the noble belt. IRL you wouldn’t need that many and as an artist they’re a pain in the ass to draw.
2. DAO is responsible for the ugliest and most unnatural looking couters I’ve ever had the displeasure to draw. They look like bowls attached to your elbows and they make no sense. Which leads me to my next point...
3. DAO is also responsible for separate bits of plate armour for your arm that do not connect where they ought to. In the Middle Ages, the armour for your arm was all interconnected: the pauldron connects to the rerebrace which connects to the couter which connects to the vambrace. In DAO, you’ve just got your elbow pads, maybe a gauntlet, a bit of plate that I suppose is supposed to be a rerebrace or spaulder for your upper arms, and then a godawful misshapen pauldron. Which leads me to my next point...
4. Pauldrons that have spikes that look like they will KO their wearer if given the chance. Also pauldrons that look like they would “catch” weapons instead of cleanly deflecting the blow away from the body.
5. Armour with rondels and winged pauldrons. Larger pauldrons do the work of a rondel: they protect your armpit. If you have a spaulder or a smaller pauldron that doesn’t protect your armpit then you might go for a rondel. In the DA franchise, they seem to enjoy stapling rondels (or maybe they’re just giant bolts?) to pauldrons.
6. The SMALLEST chestplates known to man. Or a chestplate without its buddy the backplate. This is a Warden callout. :’) It screams “Crush my collarbone, you swine, my chestplate can’t do shit!”
7. The heinous and unforgivable lack of cuisses. Go ahead and tell your thighs they don’t matter then kiss those puppies goodbye.
8. A gorget that is YAWNING so wide it doesn’t actually protect the goddamn neck! I am specifically calling out the Templars on this one.
9. The goddamn overuse of tassets--at least I think they were going for tassets--by the franchise as a whole. The segmented style is called an Almain rivet and you can see that on Templar & Warden armour... except it’s never actually attached to the cuirass? It always seems to be held up by a belt? It’s not meant to be a substitute for cuisses. I don’t know what they were thinking. They probably weren’t and probably figured no one would notice/care. BUT I DO. I DO!
10. They overuse tassets, but don’t cover the assets if you know what I mean. I originally thought that what I’m referring to as tassets could have been their attempt at faulds & culets? Not sure on that one. Anyway, faulds & culets are bits of plate that tend to cover the hips/waist/ass area. One sure sign that a designer is looking at jousting armour is when they don’t. cover. the ass. (The original wearer didn’t need to because they’d be on a horse! But your footsoldier absolutely needs to cover their ass.) I’m thinking of the DAI Wardens again with this one. :’)
