No gallant poses allowed with this kid.

Prince Sidon is actually one of my favorite characters in Breath of the Wild. It took a lot for me to not say anything while she was talking smack about him literally the entire time we were in Zora's Domain. To each their own I guess.

 

An old random character design. I didn't really have any concrete plans for this character; it was mostly just me toying around with cyberpunk armor. But then I started to put together ideas for a story about a futuristic Kyoto, Japan, where a government agency seeks to preserve the delicate balance between humans and yōkai (supernatural spirit creatures in Japanese folklore) a decade after a devastating war between the two, and I realized this armor design would work great for the agency's field ops unit.

 

We've been trying to help her understand that the clothing options in the game are less about Link looking cool and more about him trying to stay alive.

It's not working.

 Sheikah monks are creepy. But cool. But creepy.

 

What happens when you give your niece the controller.

 Turns out video games are super easy when you've got someone else doing all the legwork for you. :)

More old art, this time of a Neopets character so obscure he's not even canon anymore. Sir Bold Heart was one of several very old Collectible Cards with dated artwork which were replaced by newer cards; if I remember correctly, it was around the time of Champions of Meridell and they were replaced by Meridell-themed cards.

Honestly I think Sir Bold Heart could have stayed with updated artwork; he clearly fits the Meridell vibe.

More Neopets clothing items modeled by Neopets (surprisingly enough).

I've been rather busy lately, but I was finally able to get back to the Idaho Museum of Natural History for more paleo doodling!

They've got a great cast of a Prosaurolophus skull, and I figured I needed more hadrosaurs in my life. I also wanted to illustrate a hadrosaur showing some of the more recent discoveries about this group's anatomy, such as the ridge along its back and a soft-tissue crest. Also important is the fact that hadrosaurs had a keratinized rhamphotheca (i.e. a beak) which allowed them to crop off bites of the tough vegetation that made up their diet. Any paleoart you see with a hadrosaur having a flat, kinda flabby-looking duck bill is inaccurate. 

As a matter of fact (and I am aware this is purely personal opinion and most people don't care), it gets on my nerves when hadrosaurs are called "duck-billed" dinosaurs because in life, the front of their mouths would have more resembled a turtle beak. "Duck-bill" also conjures images of these guys wading through swamps and scooping up mushy plants, when it has been known for decades that they were fully terrestrial and ate conifers and the like. It's an inaccurate and outmoded nickname and I really think it's got to go.

Anyway, that's just me being pedantic. Again.

Some older doodles of Celice Anfel from my Neopets fics modeling some of the spiffy robes at Brightvale Armour (which, being Brightvalian, I imagine she shops there a lot). I think the rightmost one got into the Art Gallery?

More hijinks playing video games with my awesome (and slightly horse-obsessed) niece.

A few more old Neopets illustrations, based on Collectible Card characters.

Realizing that I started playing the website before Meridell was discovered makes me feel like, super ancient.

Sav'aaq! I've been on kind of a Breath of the Wild kick lately. Helping my sister and niece play through it is really fun; it's one of those games that's just really fascinating to watch other people play because no two people approach it in the same way. 

I think a big part of the game's charm and appeal is that, while on the surface it's an action RPG, in reality the gameplay reaches a much deeper level than most of the rest of its genre, putting an emphasis on creative utilization of the environment, lateral thinking, and applied physics principles. The fact that there's usually no one right way to approach a problem means that there are as many styles of play and ways the action can unfold as there are players--in other words, a groundbreakingly emergent RPG experience.

Unless you're my niece, in which case it's just a game about riding horses. :)

I was super thrilled to see the Gerudo make such a great showing in BotW! I have an affinity for warrior cultures (if you haven't guessed from a lot of my writing), and I love deserts, so I've thought the Gerudo were awesome ever since the bygone days of Ocarina of Time. I really love the treatment they got in BotW, with an expanded culture and lore and Urbosa being super epic (the fact that she shares a voice actress with Hollyberry Cookie just gives her extra awesomeness points). It was also fantastic to see the Gerudo portrayed as a protagonistic people with a lot of likeable traits, since (with the exception of Nabooru) they were pretty much antagonists during Ocarina of Time.

I haven't actually played Tears of the Kingdom yet, but my (other) sister says as soon as she's done with her copy, she'll lend it to me, so I'm psyched to dive back into Hyrule.

Until then, I am avoiding spoilers like the plague.

 

The conclusion of the Mystic Flour Cookie storyline in Cookie Run: Kingdom gave me all the feels! It was so awesome to see Dark Cacao reunited with his warriors. Poor guy definitely needs a hug after everything he's been through.

I'm also really glad Caramel Arrow and Crunchy Chip came back in the end; they're two of my favorite characters (and in a game where virtually every character is extremely well-designed, well-written, and well-voiced, that's really saying something). I absolutely hate when a franchise has no qualms about offing characters left and right (cough Harry Potter cough), and I was hoping Cookie Run wouldn't go down that path. And they didn't, because they're cool like that, and they're good about not letting their plotlines get too serious, which is one of the many reasons I like the IP so much.

A young Pokémon trainer and her trusty reality-altering companion.

Glitches like Missingno. in older video games were a big inspiration for the plot of Pixeldust. Back in the day, I really enjoyed exploring beneficial glitches that allowed the player to have an entirely different experience from what the developers intended (go anywhere as Fierce Deity Link, anyone?). It felt like I was tapping into an alternate universe that had manifested independently of the developers, as though the game had taken on a life of its own.

Which is basically exactly what happens in Pixeldust, where the main character utilizes a glitch to travel to maps in an MMORPG that aren't supposed to be accessible to the public yet, and creates her own alternate (and much more interesting) narrative to the game's otherwise really cliché plotline. I think that's kinda the secret dream of a lot of RPG gamers, honestly.

Currently helping my sister and niece play through The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the first time. My niece is a hoot. These are all based on things she actually said.

Not pictured: "We have to find more Clorox and get lots of Clorox Seeds!"