W. Orbital Laser Beam Propaganda Poster
So unfortunately, life has gotten busy and crazy again as did the last. I ended up having to take a hiatus from arts for a bit but I'm now back to tinkering and making some fun things. My office job took away my remote work and more life events have happened, as they do for all of us.
In my anti-corporate "rage" I started to make some silly propaganda posters that now hang in my cubicle. The above is the first one I did and my return to messing around in Illustrator. For context this is a joke I have with a co-worker that there is a hidden facility under the office building that houses an orbital laser beam cannon thing. With that, there are "W.O.L.B." agents that protect it and roam the building like the busy bodies they are.
ATOM Labor Propaganda Poster
I started to learn designs of propaganda posters of all sorts just by looking for some examples to put into my own art. Looking at old WWII posters and corporate propaganda circling around. Its been neat to see how they are made and worded as you will see in some other works that I have done so far this year.
The ATOM credit was used from its original creation and modified a bit to be in this poster now. I made this as an allegory to how my job feels with all the changes it has gone though. I used to have a lot more creative freedom and voice before team restructuring. Now it's very bland as I just do my little part day after day without being a hero. I'm just supposed to do my work, don't speak up, and keep going.
Extraordinarily Ordinary Award
Keeping with the corpo-propaganda feel, I created this subpar award poster. The wording took some inspiration from the Fallout games of "hard work is happy work" or the ignorance of worker drones and how the corporations treat folks. Making a subpar score seem like its fantastic.
The real drive behind this one was from the real experience I had with my yearly review at work for 2024. I was told despite doing really well that I was only getting "satisfactory" or a 3/5 across the board. This was to make way for others because of a forced ranking system that HR has. To "fit everyone in the same bucket" is a load of shit honestly. The system there is to motivate, but if I'm doing well and still get a bad score, then why try?
Leaving the World Better Than We Found It Propaganda Poster
If it wasn't clear yet, so far this year has been fueled with disdain for corporations and what they continue to do to working people like myself and for the world we live in. This poster includes a lot of symbolism that I enjoy. On the left side we have tranquility with nature, but also leaving this behind. On the right side we have the harsh reality of industrialization in seemingly the same plot of land. Having this with the "Better Than We Found It" alludes to those folks that find the right side to be more just than what we could have had on the left.
The quote is pretty common to see, but this in particular is fun because it's a direct quote from the CEO I work under. They had said this after recently calling people back into the office, to of course drive cars and waste petrol to do the same job they've been doing fine without commuting. I'm a little more salty about it because I have a commute time of around an hour without traffic.
A Custom Helldivers 2 Dark Matter Specialist Badge
After quite some time, I finally got back into tinkering with vector tools again. I had been wanting to make something like this for awhile. Since I have been active on Helldivers 2, I felt inspired to make a custom rank badge. For any that are in the know, I wanted to make something like this since the Meridia incident in the game.
I liked this in particular because I was able to use a fun new feature that was new to me. It was the tool to be able to wrap the horizontal ring around the main badge object/horns on the badge. Previously I had to figure out how to do this manually and it was such a pain in the backside. Beyond that, I liked the color-scheme given it was lore-centric and just pleasing to the eye too.
Anomaly Stairs Warning Poster
This was a fun one to make and is partially based on some other warning posters I had seen before online. Making the isometric stairs was what I worked on first as they were the biggest challenge of this piece. Simple enough however as drawing the shapes was easy. It was helpful to have an isometric grid to help with that. The boldness of the colors and the emphasis of that makes this look nice.
Kraveth Full Name Logo
Kraveth Minimal Logo
In the later part of the year I started to tinker around with music digitally. Ended up with a small midi controller and messed around with software related to that. Yet another hobby to put under the belt. Hopefully one that I will stick with. It did make me want to pick up my physical instruments again too.
Onto the above, I wanted to put a name to the creativity if I ever did/do anything with it. Thus became Kraveth. I pondered over the name for a bit, wanted to have something neat and related to birds, in this case, ravens. This is one of my favorite designs so far!
Creating the raven head was tricky because of how I wanted it to be blocky-looking but still have raven form to it. I used some references to help along with that. The "V" in Kraveth actually came together from the Helldivers 2 banner that I made last year. I took both of the wings and spliced them together for this. The last thing to note for some of the work done on this is the "E". Originally the E was not at the slant you see now. This was a bit tricky to make look correctly as the white space between the V and the T needed to be balanced right. I think I did okay with it.
Company Waste Propaganda Poster
Back to me grumbling about corporate life comes this new poster late in the year. As the project I'm working on becomes more of a wild dumpster fire, I question more and more of why they do the things that they do. There are so many things that could be solved if time is taken to do things the right way. My boss even told me "expediency trumps idealism".
In response to it all, we have another poster depicting the very silliness. The top half shows that there is no time and no care for doing things the proper way. Sometimes there can be too much procedure, but doing things correctly can go a long way. The top half shows what decisions are usually made. Throwing away time, money, and energy because of having to fix mistakes from the result of the top half.
The Garlemald Trinity | FFXIV Garleans
I decided to try something new again in Illustrator with this piece. I had never done true portraits before, at least ones that are more realistic. With some research and tutorial help, I started with Emet-Selch which is why this one looks the best to me. I followed some tutorials closely for that one. I tried doing more "free-hand" with less training wheels when moving onto Varis, and further with Zenos. Out of the three, Varis is the one I like the most on how it turned out.
I'm not sure where the idea stemmed from but I wanted to make the banner originally with the three of them within the sections of the Garlemald symbol. Playing around with that, it looked a bit odd, so I ultimately decided to style it with them outside of it. I probably spent a couple to a few hours on each one of them, and then brought them together for the full piece.
Emet-Selch
Emperor Varis
Zenos
As I mentioned above, I had created the three of them separately as they are displayed here. It was a fun learning experience to be able to do this. Again, Emet looks the best since I was looking at the tutorial to a T. However, his portrait was also a head-on/facing forward portrait which also made it easier to do. Varis and Zenos I purposefully had them looking in opposite directions to make the final piece what I wanted. Them looking to the side made it more difficult to get proper proportions and details. Overall, I'm happy with how all of them turned out and can't wait to use and practice these new skills.
DAM Energy Drink Advertisement Poster
I started to get on a roll mid-way through the fourth quarter of this year. I was really enjoying making new art for fun. It really helps my mental space when I have a creative outlet, so I was trying to find more things to create. It certainly helps get my mind off of other things. Plus it allows me to "play" those little desktop idler games. I was heavy into Cornerpond being on while I make stuff.
This next piece was for another thing from Final Fantasy XIV, that being the DAM energy drink that is featured for the Arcadion normal raid content. I thought it would be fun to make a lore-centric advertisement about it. I tried to make the look of it as close as I could to the item in the game. The reference I had was very small as it's all I could get my hands on. I did happen to use some of the in-game item description to come up with some of the wording.
Using some of the new knowledge of the tools I'm using, I was able to come up with the above. I believe that as I learn and get used to the tooling more, that it is defining the art style that I am capable of. Nothing spectacular, but at least I can get a kick out of it.
One last thing of note, is that I learned how to "brand" my artwork now too. Not sure if will really do anything to help theft from humans or AI, but it'll make me feel better about it. I think it's a fun signature, keeping the Detecdev flair with it.
Xandor Darte Portrait
Xandor Darte Portrait | Post-Polish Pass
Xan Portrait Saga
Original
I kept going full steam in the later part of the year and continued to hone some of the new things I had learned with the tools I'm using.
This portrait of my character in Final Fantasy XIV serves as a milestone for me. Not only am I really happy for once on how it turned out, but also because I could actually do this. I have had a lot of self doubt in general, however this was exponential with art and other projects. This helped me break through that a little bit. I could finally make some kind of art of what I wanted to.
Stemming from the tools/techniques I learned and used with the Garleans just some few weeks prior, I applied that to this portrait of Xan. The thing I'd like to improve on now is clothing as I'm not sure how I feel about it in this yet. Still, I believe this is one of my best so far. I hope that I can make alterations and new ones of both Xan and other characters too.
Polished
I ended up being able to get feedback from some folks online about the original portrait. Shout-out to Maikii and Mud for the stellar help you gave me! I was able to learn a lot from the both of them to edit the original and also do more effective things later.
I think doing the polish pass ended up giving the piece a lot more depth and detail. Spending more time on it with the things I learned was a fun experience. Going forward, there are things that I will incorporate from the start that I did not have with this one.
One of the main things that I got the most feedback on was contrast. I started with, and kept with, darkening the shadows and lightening the highlights. Initially this was good, and I do think it does look better. However, there is more fundamental things I will need to look at for general color balancing instead of just adding the black/white in the future. Something that will come with time.
The other big one was taking the time to add the smaller details. I added a handful of them to add more depth to the overall portrait. Things like smaller shadows within the ears, or the clothing for example. Some of the other things were shape language, and the line art along with it.
Showcase
I had posted the portrait to the FFXIV Reddit forum to a sparse crowd of interest, as most of my projects are for whatever reason. However, some time later, a representative of the North American Square Enix Community team reached out to me! They wanted to showcase my art in the Duty Commenced Twitch Stream/Podcast that they run. Possibly other forms of social media too, they had said. I was so honored for them to reach out an ask out this.