#legglessdraws

Overall designing this character was such a treat, since there was already a moodboard available with a clear vision for the character in terms of style and the overall character concept was appealing to me.

Particularly interesting to me was trying to balance out him on the one hand being royalty and the other hand him being an assassin. So for one, he should be shown to be a bit flashy or having a taste for luxurious items and clothing, while also keeping in mind that he needs to be able to blend in and be stealthy should the need arise. Furthermore, his outfit should be easy to move in for that same reason. In the end what really made the outfit work as a balance of those two, almost opposing requirements/characteristics, is the color palette we ended up going with. Lots of muted, dark colors, with little flashes of vibrant colors and gold jewelry.

The Amber Sword is an in-game sword of legend and therefore has a very old appearance and does not fit into the rest of the scifi world aesthetic for this reason. @legglessdraws pointed me in the direction of celtic swords for that reason as well, since it's really supposed to be ancient. I played around with celtic inspired hilts but also other more winged motifs since I at first thought Zephyr was Zephyr from Greek mythology, deity of the west wind. That ended up working too, since the bee-like hilt does fit a goddess of fertility. I enjoyed painting the various amber blades a lot, doing studies of amber beforehand to get the material right.

The thing I struggled with the most was probably the end phase- the layouting. I wanted to make it interesting and original, deviating from the usual gray background with slight gradient. I did a matte painting to add as a backdrop, but ended up blurring and cropping a lot of it. And even then, it was quite busy. I experimented, wanting to keep with the sci-fi aesthetic, trying to figure out how to combine the character and the items in a way that made sense. In the end I scrapped the background, and went with a simple and abstract backdrop. This is the area I feel I'll need to study more still, and see what works best and how other artists do it.

But overall I'm happy with how this character sheet turned out and it was a joy to work with @legglessdraws on this!

ok so first of all I didn’t hate him from the start. well ok kinda in Origins because I played a human noble and when I entered the tower and met Cullen I decided that I would not make any promises to either him or Wynne to either kill all the mages/let them all live because I wanted to check out what was happening first. then Wynne attacked me and I killed her just to find out wayyy later that I could’ve recruited her? so if not for Cullen she would’ve been alive for my first playthrough and since I really like her when romancing Alistair I kinda missed out on that at first :/ (and I mean he just tells you to kill all the mages even if he doesn’t know if they’re all possessed or anything. yes he was tortured and I can understand why he may have said it at that moment but later on, as far as I know, he doesn’t show any sign of regret that he told you to to kill them all)

also people who love Cullen telling me his “affection” for a mage warden in Origins is endearing and cute? yeah it’s not. it’s creepy as fuck. the circle is ,all said and done, a prison. the mages are the prisoners, the templars are the jailers. jailers are not allowed to have any kind of relationship with prisoners because being imprisoned you can’t give consent. the jailer is in a position of power and they could quit and go away if they chose to. the prisoner can’t. it’s plain as that. yes he didn’t act on it or anything but just showing an interest (especially one that is strong enough for others to notice which the other mages did) is enough. imagine you would be trapped somewhere and this would happen to you. yes maybe nothing will happen but you don’t know that. you don’t know if the other person cares enough about the rules to leave you alone. and if you decide to speak up? well then you will probably be ignored or even silenced somehow. and still you can’t leave. you are at their mercy.

then I played DA 2 and since I played Awakening before that I had to romance Anders. so yeah of course we weren’t already on best terms. and when he told me ‘mages aren’t people’ I was kinda pissed? and when he, at the last possible minute, decided to side with me and not with Meredith… well let’s just say I would’ve finished him then and there if I’d been giving a choice (seriously I can kill my feather bf whom I love but not the noodle hair who has only fucked up ever since I met him? rude.) like he knew what kind of monster Meredith was. he knew what was happening in the Gallows, mages being made tranquil, tortured and what not (like if just imprisoning them wasn’t already enough) but he chose to do nothing. and his switching sides in the end? makes it worse for me. if his trauma from being tortured and everything made him blind to all the stuff that was happening to the mages and made him trust Meredith completely then he would’ve fought Hawke in the end. but he didn’t. so no one can tell me he didn’t realise way earlier that Meredith was crazy and delusional. he knew and he chose to look away just so that in the end he still had the choice (something that mages were never given) to be the “hero” and not face any kind of consequences. disobeying/fighting Meredith would’ve required an effort he wasn’t willing to make for “just” mages (who aren’t people anyway so who cares right?)

and now we come to the “best” part: Inquisition

I started the first DA game when Inquisition was already out. so when I finally started playing it I had seen a lot of stuff on the internet(especially tumblr of course) and SO much stuff about Cullen/romancing Cullen. so I thought: well maybe he’s changed? maybe he’s realised his past mistakes and is trying to make up for it. and I decided to romance him to see what all the fuss was about. the whole game I tried to get to know him, to be impartial, to not judge him because of the previous games and the role he played. and I do agree that his romance was kinda cute if you like only knew him from Inquisition? (a bit boring for me maybe and kinda like ‘we’ll make another Alistair-like romance but just not as good’ but that’s just personal taste) but hoooo boy was I about to be disappointed. did he change? nope. maybe in a sense that he is even more self-righteous than he used to be but that’s about it. he still tries to suppress the mages, to reinstate the circle, to basically ‘go back to how things were before’, tell you to not trust them, to chose the templars. and what’s his reason for all that? he fucking sob story of how he was tortured once (oh noooo poor baby, that probably never happened to any of the mages in your circle because you are the good guy here, right?) and of course because of what happened at Kirkwall. and who does he blame for that? well mages of course. Anders in particular (like the whole game does anyway). HE FUCKING DARES TO BLAME THE MAGES FOR WHAT HAPPENED AT KIRKWALL! he ignores basically everything that led to this moment, Meredith being a crazy mage-hating bitch, templars abusing their powers OPENLY, him knowing about that and deciding to do nothing. but noooo, the templars are clearly not at fault here. maybe Meredith who was crazy but ha! that’s just one person not every templar hates mages and is abusive… oh what? yes. mages are of course always a potential danger. to themselves and to others so they have to be confined and ‘protected’ because this is the only way obviously…. like yes we have templars that are ‘not that bad’, who try to help mages (or who think they’re helping them) but is he one of them? no sir. but he sure as hell will be self-rightous about it anyway. and then he dares to get even more freaking pity-points from you with his whole lyrium addiction??? ‘templars have it hard too you know??’(to be fair, it worked on me the first time because I was still really trying to like him and to see the good side or whatever and don’t get me wrong I still won’t let him take it because I try to be a better person. just out of spite in that case) yeah well I got news for you dickhead: you fucking chose to be a fucking templar. YOU HAD A CHOICE. something no circle-mage was ever given so maybe think about that while you drown in your self-pity? just a suggestion.