My long in development, probably never to be completed Final Fantasy VIII RPG known simply as Annihilation. This layout had a LONG journey to get to this point, it actually started as a much smaller MSN Groups layout for my DBZ RPG, Renewed Faith. It never got used for RF because reformatting all the content was not a task we wanted to take. After that I had reworked it for a follow up to my Chrono Trigger RPG, but again I didn’t end up going there. Finally it came to use for FF8A. I was fast at work on the layout and RPG on MSN Groups before it closed and the project went into hiatus again finally to be fully revived on Dystopia Productions. What you are viewing here was the probably 60% complete player profile page, it was mostly working as it should but I was unable to finish the mechanics to do everything before I abandoned the project. This is the building blocks for what will be the Chimera Engine.

When Dragon Quest VIII came out on the PS2 I was blown away with how great the game really was and it wasn’t long before I decided that I wanted to bring that atmosphere and overall feeling to a forum based RPG. This came about at the end of the MSN Groups era and I decided that I wanted to make the most detailed RPG that I could make, something that would blow every other RPG out of the water. Although this project ended up stalling when MSN Groups was announced to be closing and I only ever finished eight full pages of content I to this day believe each of those pages, including this one, are among my very best ever. Hopefully one day I’ll manage to make my way back to Dragon Quest VIII and finish the project for everyone to enjoy.

This is an interesting addition to my portfolio. Prior to making this wallpaper in I believe early 2007 I had mainly focused on abstract artwork and layouts. Up to this point I had really not ventured out of those two areas but I decided after seeing a lot of this style artwork to try it myself. Now that being said, Apocalyptica is not the first space scene I did. Before going large scale with a wallpaper I had first completed two smaller trials to see if I could in fact get the textures and style right. Sadly this was kinda a short lived period, after this wallpaper I actually never did any more space scenes, I soon found myself interested in vectors and took my focus there for awhile. If I ever get back into doing digital art, I think this genre is one that I will want to revisit and see if I can do something a big more grandiose.

Ah good old Cyberpunk Nexus, the biggest, more daring thing I ever did online. For those of you who are unaware of what CPN was, here’s a small history lesson. In 2008 MSN announced that their Groups service would be closing. For many of us, me included, MSN Groups had been a home where we hosted our RPGs. With Groups out of the picture we were going to have to find a new home. I thought it would be a good idea to build that home myself. CPN ended up being a 2 year venture and for a good while a very successful one. This layout was launched with the site and served as our theme for the first year before all the true work was done to automate everything and which came with a new design. In the end this is probably my most detailed and best done layout. There are many versions and so much work into it, more than a screenshot can capture, that’s for sure.

Aside from FFvii Fortress I was probably most known for my Trigun RPG known as Project Seeds. The RPG originally opened during the peek of the golden age of MSN Groups RPGs, 2003.  While it enjoyed a good run then it eventually went into the vault only to be brought back again in 2007. Two layouts came before this one during that reconstruction but neither of them ever saw the light of day. Finally I decided on a stripped down version and this is what I came up with. I have to give a big thanks to Keith Moore (Saiyen) for the vector used in the banner. I had originally used the same image from the Trigun artbook however it’s quality was less than great and Saiyen was kind enough to devote his time while I focused my work on the content.

Lifeless is a pretty significant wallpaper to me, it was the first really serious piece of artwork I ever did. Not to say it was my first wallpaper as I had been dabbling in the medium for awhile before Lifeless but up until that point I was really just learning the ropes. As a statement though Lifeless also means a lot to me personally, as it represents a pretty tough period in my life and was a major help getting though it. Lifeless was created completely in photoshop, and still to this day probably is the wallpaper I spent the most time working on, 10s of hours went into the brushwork (probably because at the time I didn’t really know what I was doing and there was a lot of trial and error) and I think it shows!