Onyrica

Descending - [ FFXIV Reward ]

Added 2025-11-16 17:51:58 +0000 UTC

"I don't want to let you fall away, but I've been left no choice... don't you see that?"

Mother of art, this took SO long to finish and went through an unhinged number of revisions before I landed on the final design and composition.

The outfit was, by far and large, the most time consuming part. I wanted it to be lavish and over the top, with influences taken from Edea's (FF8) and Yoshitaka Amano's designs, and although the initial sketch was already quite extravagant, I somehow managed to add more and more complexity the further in I went.

The background also went through a couple of iterations as, in the process of rendering the piece, what had originally been working started to look cluttered and disjointed. So naturally I threw it all away and started from scratch after telling myself I was "nearly done".

And that's only half of the total number of versions...

I feel like I could write and present a Ted Talk on the challenges and realisations I came across in the process for this piece - which at large could be summarised in "don't second guess yourself so much, kids". Perhaps I'll put that in my back pocket for the day I go back to blogging/streaming as I'd genuinely like to share my thoughts on that.

In the meantime, please enjoy and as always, your thoughts are loved!

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This reward was an "Ultimate Mystery Box", purchased with points through my patreon reward portal StarStickers! If you're a patron make sure you sign up, and if you're not... well /intense eyebrow wagging/