RPG Characters For My Friends
In the late 2010s, I got very into drawing my friends and loved ones as fantasy characters. I got better at drawing as I went. You can see the improvements over time.
My first foray into this style was this drawing of my friend Ari as a little half-gnome half-elf. Ari has excellent style, and I was inspired by the unique vibe of their outfits and colors. I drew them in “full gear” on the left— that was how they’d dress on some kind of Adventure. I wanted to give their “full gear” outfit a wide variety of styles to create the impression that this is their highest-stat gear which they’ve picked up over the course of many adventures. There is sort of a sci-fi hood/helmet/thing with what I imagine are porcelain flower on top. There is basic plate armor, there are some boots that have some sort of glass or crystal enchantment on them. I wanted this character to look like a jack-of-all-trades, maybe a bard or ranger, which Ari liked to play as. The outfit to the right was inspired by Ari’s actual outfits that they wore at the time. They had a very stylish, unique fashion sense that was barely different from this, except that I muted their colors a bit and made them a bit more renaissance-faire-y. They are holding a bottle of wine because I pictured them trying to seduce the dragon.
My second drawing is of my sister, Hannah. I made her a part-orc-part-wood-elf. This is because my Elder Scrolls characters were always Orcs and hers were always Bosmer, so I felt like if we were to exist in a fantasy universe, it was important to reflect both heritages. I felt like Hannah had to be a bard/druid. She was traveling a lot and doing a lot of wilderness exploration at the time, so I thought her outfit should reflect that. Her magical hood is enchanted to look like a mountain. She’s got a ukelele. She’s carrying several bags, including one that I meant to look like Ojibwe beadwork, to add some of our heritage into this universe. The knit gloves are just real gloves she had at the time. There is a Chris Fleming sketch I think of a lot when I’m drawing stuff like this where Fleming’s character, Don Fitzgibblons, blurts “I am wearing everything I own right now.” That’s the vibe I wanted here. On the right, I have a less-geared-up Hannah lost in a swamp. The turtle is not her pet, just a turtle that’s around at the time. Her outfit is essentially just a real jumpsuit she had at the time that I added cool chains to to be more fantastical.
I rushed the drawing process of this one, but I still love the character design. This is my friend Gabe, who I think I was imagining as some kind of bee paladin. I felt like he would pick up the best possible gear, so I gave him a blue flaming sword and some kind of sci-fi gauntlet. I really like my bee helmet and my bee shield, and I also like his big hat. I don’t know what sort of oath Gabe swore to the bees, but they imbue him with tremendous power. As the only friend who had ever actually been to a renaissance faire at the time, he was the only one with a real outfit for me to reference on the right side. I drew him with his best friend, Wizard Mouse.
I only did the armored-up version of my friend Chris. If you zoom in close, you can see his face through the ice helmet. I made him a water genasi. Chris was working in Japan at the time, so I took some inspiration from Japanese floral prints for his robe. I believe that Chris specifically asked to be a certain RPG class, but I remember feeling like I wanted him to be a wizard, so I don’t remember what I was trying to do here. I do know that his armor is made out of book pages. I also remember that I was playing a lot of Dark Souls at the time I drew this, and it shows.
This is the most recent one of these, which is evident because there is a background. This is my girlfriend Olivia. I drew this early in our relationship— if I was going to re-draw her now, I’d give her a huge spiked shield, to reflect how she plays games, as a perma-tank. But I really wanted to draw that axe. I had the idea of an axe that was supposed to look like a bouquet of roses and I felt like she needed it. All lesbian relationships are like that. I believe she was meant to be some sort of animal barbarian berserker, which is why she’s got raven feathers on one hand and a bear claw on the other. She’s a big vampire fan, so I gave her a bat-wing hat and some Dracula boots. On the right, she’s hanging out in the haunted woods. Her guitar has fireflies in it. She’s not lost in the haunted woods because she has a perfect sense of direction.
I never drew myself in this world the same way I drew other people, but I did do this little doodle of me and Olivia on the plane to Costa Rica, which I kept referring to as "Coastal Rica," to her mild chagrin. I am a part-orc-part-elf (in keeping with Hannah's heritage, since we are siblings and there MUST be consistency in these doodles) and I'm a wizard. No weapons just straight caster every time. Fireball fireball fireball.