ariibees

Latest Posts by ariibees

We’ve finally finished playing Drakkenheim after three years of sessions and I can’t help but feel such a weird sense of grief over Chris’ ending, despite the party having "won" the adventure.

The final chunk of the campaign suffered quite a lot due to external reasons -- the final 10-ish sessions took us an entire year to get through due to scheduling issues, absolutely killing the momentum of the campaign, and for various reasons the DM was unable to commit the time/thought the campaign really needed to wrap up the story in a satisfying way.

Drakkenheim as a campaign book is very story-driven, featuring faction intrigue and a larger, overarching plot to keep things moving while having players choose a specific goal/quest for their character to tie them directly into the story. But by the end of the campaign, we were completely glossing over NPC interactions and faction relationships, and essentially hand-waving the completion of half of the party’s personal quests, ruining what we had been building up to throughout the whole campaign.

Chris’ personal quest -- to study the eldritch corruption taking over the city, and someday reverse it -- was never resolved. His character arc involving his relationship with one of the factions was dropped, and his bond with his mentor mostly ignored.

It felt unearned to use his character epilogue to resolve all of his struggles that should have been addressed in the main campaign, and so it ended up much more ambiguous than the rest of the party -- where other party members were looking towards the future, becoming nobility or attaining pseudo-godhood or traveling the planes or whatever else, Chris was left exactly where he was at the start of the campaign: trying to find a way to cleanse the contamination, something that may or may not ever be achievable.

There’s nothing stopping me from writing a continuation to Chris' story, and the DM has encouraged us to do as we please with our characters from here. But it feels weird knowing anything I do from here is for myself alone, when we spent the last three years making this story together.

The DM has mentioned possibly coming back together in the future for a short adventure where we track down and kill the Duchess a year or so after the campaign ends, and I could see Chris hoping to extract some information about the contamination from her -- depending on how that adventure goes, maybe that will redeem the ending of the main campaign. Or maybe not; we’ll see.

Ultimately, I think I will eventually figure out a better epilogue for him. I love the world of Drakkenheim and the lore has so much fun stuff to build off of. I want him to have something greater than what he got, and the world is so detailed and creative I know I can give him the ending he deserves. Maybe I'll illustrate some fun post-game comics or similar to make it feel more "real."

But we’ll see. For now, things are raw, so I’m gonna take some time to sit on things and mull over where I’m gonna go with him from here.

outer wilds, huh

𝘐𝘧 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳, 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘭𝘢𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘴 𝘭𝘢𝘴𝘵?

Continuing my efforts to design Chris' next armor set! Commentary below the cut.

I tried to make the meteor armor set work, but was having to stretch things too far to justify it (completely changing its shape/patterns, dyeing it, layering it with diamond robes to make his staves/tomes build work, etc. to the point it was really meteor armor in name only). So this is a hard pivot -- for this outfit, Chris works with the Guide/Dryad to make jungle armor, and then transmutes it into the ancient cobalt set using the Shimmer. The wings and diamond staff design aren't set in stone; I just needed something simple to get the colors down while focusing on the armor.

This does decrease the impact of the meteor a bit, but hey, Malik will still appreciate some meteor shots I'm sure. And plot-wise, having another moment of the Guide/Dryad both influencing Chris is helpful to set up some following scenes.

I'm definitely happier with this than my previous designs. Swapping "generic metal plate"-star for the diamond-star ties the ancient cobalt breastplate nicely into the diamond staff. And if he picks up the magic missile (haven't fully decided his late pre-hardmode loadout), the outfit design and color scheme fits with that well enough too. This outfit also doesn't suffer from some significant issues the previous ones had (body design too dark and lacking contrast, metal garters too shiny causing a striped look, etc.) because of the updated color scheme. It also displays his worm scarf more prominently (albeit still dyed), helping to immediately justify the Eater of Worlds fight beyond "well the Dryad said so and also you can get a cool pickaxe or maybe a void bag later."

The lunar/celestial imagery is a bit more naturally integrated with this design, such as the "comet/falling star trails" that form the pattern on his breastplate being more emphasized, rather than just "here's a giant star, 'cause he's a mage, get it?" And while dropping the robes look is a significant design shift, keeping his gloves and boots visually similar connects his previous design with this one without seemingly having just palette-swapped his old robes. This is also barely armor -- it's more of an armored shirt -- so it doesn't invite as much whiplash from seeing Chris jump from "mage in robes, albeit with a somewhat heroic cape design" to "wearing straight-up armor."

Color-wise, I did add a small amount of purple to this design compared to the in-game ancient cobalt armor. Magenta/purple is associated with the amethyst set, Nebula pillar, shadow magic, band of starpower, etc. and so I didn't want to make him too blue and muddy the waters (blue is Lunatic Cultist, Stardust pillar, etc.). I also don't want him to blend too hard into the dungeon walls, one reason why the outfit is so bright. But it should still be enough blue to make Chris stand out against the red backdrop of Hell later on. I'm feeling good about the level it's at currently, and I can always subtly tweak it in particular scenes as-needed to make him fit in or stand out as needed. On the flip side, his wings get a soft warm brown tone rather than a cold sheen to contrast his outfit and tie into his skin/eye/hair color to both introduce more color hues into his outfit and make his head less disconnected from the rest of the design.

I did try to minimize the number of different colors overall, but it doesn't significantly impact the complexity either way. This is just a product of how I color characters -- instead of color-picking from a reference image, I have a folder of coloring layers for each character that I copy into each page. So each folder will have, for instance, one layer for hair, one for a character's shirt, and so on. Each layer has a max of two colors so that I can color pick them into my main/sub color icons, clear the layer, and then paint bucket those colors in. So since I'm already handling every layer separately, adding more layers (especially of solid colors) doesn't significantly impact the time I need to spend coloring.

Anyways, that's all I've got. Character design is hard.

so what youre gonna wanna do is crush the garlic and ginger instead of just slicing it ok, it releases more of those good flavors. yoshi is going to eat me and turn me into an egg now, i love you. remember everything i taught you

SILKSONG MENTION????

2025!!!!

SILKSONG

SKONG REAL

SKONG REAL

it's giving princess celestia

Met the big boss himself last night

I'm at Galaxycon Richmond all four days! Say hi if you see me :)

Pov: you and your friend enter the wrong seed

@pixelrhys @ariibees

I may make more lil doodles with the hostages I've captured :3

Doodling some ideas for upcoming armor for Chris to get a feel for how elements interact.

Leftmost is intended as diamond robes worn as vanity over dyed meteor armor; middle is similar but without dye, and right swaps out the robes for a larger worm scarf. Left feels most fitting for him, in terms of color and design -- his next weapon will be the diamond staff, so it matches well in that regard, and I played around with recreating that look in-game.

Still thinking about it though! It'll be a while in any case before it shows up in-comic, so I have time to play with it further.

Frosted cookie doves ✨🕊️🍪💖

Fields of Mistria's 2nd Major Update is coming March 10th!✨ We'll be showcasing some of the new features in the meantime, so stay tuned! To see everything that's planned, check out our roadmap here!

it’s-friday.avi

What a joy to be around.

imagine your pompous self-important ass of a colleague finally fumbles it with the goddess of magic, he goes into isolation for two years, is stripped of most his magic, and youre revelling in the schadenfreude, only for him to show up with a baddie hanging off his arm, skin glowing, a stable job, a hero of baldur's gate, a new, humble(r), #blessed 🙏 attitude, and a wedding invite. id chew off my arm.

Based on a conversation about the shellphone I had a few weeks back

The gingerbread house project!

Heads up that the Purity Town comic blog is currently shadowbanned; on top of posts not appearing in tags/search I can't access the inbox or chat. Not sure what caused it, but I sent in a support request so hopefully it'll be resolved soon enough!

It’s their greatest invention as of yet

Parting words

Little progress video of the latest chapter cover! I tried out a lot of things I don't usually do with this one, so I'm really happy with how it ultimately turned out.

I think I'm really REALLY unwell.... why did I decide to binge watch Arcane s2? I HAVE NO IDEA

I guess the real glorious evolution was the homoerotic yearning we made along the way

'don't get inspired by my style' is such a funny thing to say. do NOT let any art i make have any lasting impression on you. only view my work if you are going to men in black mind wipe yourself later. the territorial defensiveness over "art styles" is a disease of the mind stg

he’s too small for the strawberry hat