aaaZesty's
Portfolio
A display of my best and most important artworks, with pieces that I am most proud of, or were valuable learning experiences and key developmental points of my style and techniques. I work primarily in digital mediums, both 2D and 3D, drawing or modelling whatever interests me in the moment- usually stories and characters from the games I play, the work that my friends do, and life sciences, which often overlap with each other. I like to try a new thing every time, to see what styles I enjoy working with and what techniques give me the results I want, or to streamline and refine what I already know.
While some of the works here are flawed (sometimes rather obviously), they are all things that I learned something with and have shaped my current styles and understandings of how I create things. Most of my skills are self-taught, my last actual study of any arts being a game development course in TAFE which I was unable to complete, and scraping by in high school studies before that. There are, of course, other factors involved with my academic history, and those subjects still taught me a lot, but for the practicals of my work, I've always been best off with independent studies and experimentation.
Pieces are presented in no particular order. Most main gallery works were made in 2023 and 2024, older pieces sorted into the Archive section.
Email Contact;
[email protected]
Speck; ZentangleDate: 12/2023
Info: Reintroducing myself to zentagle style drawings, both as a style I've enjoyed since childhood, and as a way to practice how different line weights affect things.
Comet and Phoebe- SpaceDate: 03/2024
Info: Initially a warmup sketch borrowing characters from CrypticNightmares/Voiidless- features a certain video game easter egg! If you know, you know (it isn't the first time me and another friend have teased him with secrets in plain sight).
Additional Credits: Characters belong to CrypticNightmares (Toyhouse)
Leviathan!QuarkDate: 02/2023
Info: Freshwater leviathan reinterpretation of Quarkstew's fursona; this version of the design is a crocodile-like creature, depicted in deep mangrove waters hiding the actual size of them from any above the waters surface. The colouration is more suitable to a coral reef though, implying migratory behaviour between fresh and salt waters, much like estuary (a.k.a. saltwater) crocodiles.
Additional Credits: Original character design belongs to Quark
Jaxx StickerDate: 07/2024
Info: Made for Artfight 2024
Additional Credits: OC Design belongs to Liolaeus (Toyhouse)
Protogen Species created by KOINU (Twitter)
'Ascendance'; Shagaru!Chaotic MorudomuntoDate: 07/2024
Info: Made for Artfight 2024. Filtered with different levels of posturising for the .gif version; I hadn't originally intended to animate it in this way (or at all) but got the idea while optimizing the image export for upload. Experimenting with an abstracted painterly style
Accompanied by the text "AND IF I CANNOT REACH MY PROMISED HEAVENS, THEN I SHALL RIP THEM OUT OF THE SKY INSTEAD"; to imply or tell that the bright 'star' above him is instead a hole in the very sky itself being ripped open by the dragon, hence the action lines on the claws.
Additional Credits: OC design belongs to Beast Gabi (Toyhouse)
Chaotic Gore/Shagaru Magala and Morudomunto species belong to Capcom; Monster Hunter
Concept Art; 'Leviathan'Date: 01/2024
Info: Final concept design for original 'leviathan' creature, heavily based off of Sauropod and Parasaurolophus dinosaurs. Part of a game side project that currently remains in the hypothetical, the Leviathan would be colossal and act as an interactable environment feature, providing a high vantage point as it slowly wanders along the coastline.
KI-RN vs Oroshi KirinDate: 09/2023
Info: Sometimes you smack together two very unrelated pieces of media and come out with "wait hang on maybe I'm onto something" themes and messages of a detached-from-nature cybernetic being having to relearn the rules of said nature and to respect wild things again by being faced with animals of equal or greater power than them and coming to terms with the irrefutable truth that one can never be above nature, and it will tear you apart and put you back in your place if you give it reason to (there are incredible Ancient Civilisation parallels to be explored here).
Or sometimes you want to draw a cool ice horse along with the silly alien centaurs that kind of look like that horse.
Additional Credits: Oroshi Kirin belongs to Capcom; Monster Hunter.
KI-RN is a fan character of species Architect belonging to Unknown Worlds (Subnautica: Below Zero)
Kirby- Ice NergiganteDate: 10/2022
Info: Detailed render experimenting with layer noise filters to achieve a rougher and more textured look.
Additional Credits:
Fan character of Nergigante Species belonging to Capcom; Monster Hunter
Worlds' Most Hostile TripletsDate: 06/2023
Info: Once again borrowing a friends characters, to play with some colour theory, dramatic lighting, story symbolism, and a little bit of typography, in one overly thought-out image.
The topmost character, Malware, is the vacant 'undead' vessel of To-Ken, relating to "morbid post" from his monochrome phrase; being both the beginning and source of the story, and its end- while technically without emotion, this being still revels in itself, its' own "glory".
Beneath is To-Ken at the end of his own journey, after having grown and developed away from his own origins as a duplicate of another; a healed and "good [man]", now physically separated from the sickness but still underneath its (Malware's) power; "be burdened".
There is To-Ken again, but soon after the separation from Lumicent, still nothing but an incomplete copy, an accident and an angry one; "the wrath" of "hellish hosts".
Finally at the other end, the other beginning, is Lumicent, from who everything arose after his mistake and dormant affliction; left behind to die, and be forgotten, by his enraged copy ("T'would be better they're forgotten").
There is also two gradients in the image; the colour gradient, blending each characters main colour, and a positional gradient of where each one is looking, and where each holds their arms (from Malwares proud open arms, to Lumicents closed and shamefully lowered arms; between, a free To-Ken holds his close to his chest in fear, and a young one has his claws around his originators neck).
Additional Credits: Characters and associated story belong to CrypticNightmares (Toyhouse)
Architect species belongs to Unknown Worlds (Subnautica: Below Zero)
Text comes from the lyrics of 'Behold The Grave' by Dirt Poor Robins
ILA-AI; Bringer of LightDate: 07/2024
Info: Made for Artfight 2024. Makes use of Addition layers for the body lights, each displaced slightly for a chromatic aberration effect, doing the same behind the character but with different angles of motion blur instead of displacement, to outline and distinguish her silhouette from the background. Also playing with more intense light levels than usual, having no externa light sources
Additional Credits: Character belongs to Beast Gabi (Toyhouse)
Architect species belongs to Unknown Worlds (Subnautica: Below Zero)
T.I.I.R.G. LogoDate: 04/2024
Info: Logo design for Tropical Infection and Immunity Research Group; I rarely work with iconography or still life subjects, so it was a valuable opportunity to try something unfamiliar. Features a Cairns Fan Palm and Papa New Guinean Sepic Blue Orchic, using the stem of the palm to underline and separate acronym from the full name text.
Fruit FriendsDate: 07/2024
Info: Made for Artfight 2024. Most recent spin at lineless, and aimed for a childrens' picture book aesthetic. Also tried a new way of simplifying and abstracting a grassy texture, vaguely imitating the Animal Crossing style.
Additional Credits:
Characters belong to CrypticNightmares (Toyhouse)
Drachen PlushieDate: 07/2024
Info: Made for Artfight 2024, in roughly 10 hours (an unintentional speed model)- largely unoptimised but I only needed to be able to throw him around with rigidbody physics.
Tri Count: 19.4k
Texture Resolution: 1024x1024
Additional Credits: Character belongs to Beast Gabi (Toyhouse)
Low Poly NinoxDate: 08/2023
Info: Trying my hand at a low-poly style model, and practicing some simple animation. Also a first implemented attempt at fur cards, to help add dimensions and texture to an otherwise very flat model.
Tri Count; 1,919
Texture Resolution; 1024x512
Additional Credits: Fan character of species Architect belonging to Unknown Worlds (Subnautica: Below Zero)
Batlas (Atlas Bat) AvatarDate: 04/2024
Info: A birthday gift for a friend, presented early for Artfight 2024. Imported into VRChat with some simple custom expressions. The wings were kept extremely simple for optimization purposes, using alpha masks to detail the shape instead of mesh, and are rather rough as a result of that, but came out very well all things considered.
Tri Count: 35k
Texture Resolution: 8192x4096
Additional Credits: Character belongs to CrypticNightmares (Toyhouse)
Archive / Miscellaneous
This subsection is for older pieces that no longer represent my art style or workflow, or are smaller and unrefined pieces that I still like, even if I have no plans to continue or recreate them. I won't be including additional information about each image here, but the curious are welcome to ask about them. Most I won't have much to say about, but a few have some concepts and stories behind them.
School of Dragons Era
Many of my Dreamworks Dragons fanarts were done for people as requests, bases, and trades on the old School Of Dragons forum, which is sadly inaccessible now, but was an extremely formative place for me and had a wonderful community of other artists and writers, many of whom I've lost touch with and likely will never find again.
I've lost a lot of the drawings I made back them, but I've also managed to keep a decent chunk of my drawings, particularly from the later years of my activity there. This is only a very small selection of my favourites, and I have dozens more of varying quality stashed away still. Enjoy this collection of dragon drawings from 2016 to early 2022.
Reference Sheets
