Luna Aequor sat down with Palastel (also known as Garen Velsh or Pipin Tarupin') to discuss their love of art, what inspires them, and FFXIV!
Question: Tell us a little about you, or if you prefer, tell us about your main FFXIV character!
Answer: Heyooooo I go by Palastel or Astel for short! IT technician by day and artist at night. I've been drawing art since my wee middle school years and have always had a love for drawing my characters. I had a dream to breathe life into the stories and characters I came up with, which has made me the person I am today as I regularly draw the most self-indulgent pieces for myself. It wasn't until the last few years that I've truly improved my craft and started taking commissions that I could be satisfied with.
Most people know me well by my WoL Garen, one of the few lalafell daring enough to have mutton chops facial hair and rocks it well! He's my greatest motivator and loveliest sunshine that keeps me going every day.
Q: When did you first start drawing? Have you/do you work with other art mediums?
A: As I've been drawing since middle school, that would be the year of 2007... so 17 years! I'm quite the slow improver (sic) and have always moved at my own pace. That being very slow and determined to have a certain style as I grow. I used to be very traditional (the good ol' pencil and paper), before moving to mouse drawn pixels in MS paint (all those boring class at school!), until I settled well into my digital art style I have today.
Q: A lot of your artwork really suits the Lalafell style and chibi, but if you had to describe your personal art style, what would you call it?
A: It's honestly a very anime style! Growing up in the 2000s, I loved anime and I loved that popular style that everyone had also fallen in love with. So I banked hard into the anime style while mimicking fellow friends and peers. It's an inconsistent style, but very me so to speak. Little does everyone know before I got into FFXIV and especially lalafell art, I was very much so drawing all kinds of humans physiques and the like! It's rare, but I don't draw lalafell/chibi all the time |D
Q: What's some of your most nostalgic anime/manga from that time? Was there a particular one that inspired you the most?
A: Goodness, if I were to choose some particularly nostalgic ones out of the bunch... Gurren Lagann, Full Metal Alchemist, D. Gray-Man, Black Cat, Black Butler, Chrono Crusade, Higurashi, .Hack//SIGN... There were so many that inspired me! I think the most influential of all being a mix between Gurren Lagann and Black Cat if I had to think really hard about it.
Q: When did you first start drawing in that art style?
A: I'd say I truly started settling into this new style about 4-5 years ago. It took awhile to truly figure out how I wanted to draw FFXIV characters and eventually I found myself comfortable in this style I've taken for myself. Though it has- made me rather comfortable with drawing lalafell most of all and it's a struggle to draw the others races sometimes!
Q: What are you biggest inspirations in art that you find yourself gravitating towards the most?
A: RPG stories and roleplay in general influences a lot of the ways I draw and present my characters in art. I used to be focused solely on canon MSQ before deviating into so many AUs my friends convinced me into undertaking. That and I'm just... very self-indulgent and draw what is aesthetically pleasing to my tastes. Sometimes it's experimental which is why my art can vary between one and the next. People who know me well know that I'm obsessed with a very specific NPC that has boosted my ability time and time again!
Q: I'd love to know what you've currently got going on for Garen in your RP canon! Any fun facts or snippets of their story so far that you can share?
A: For Garen, I decided to change him up in a way that's disconnect (sic) from the MSQ so I could more freely control his story. As such, I've been spearheading a close approach to the Southern Sea Isles and basing his culture and upbringing around those regions. I even made a huge lore page based on "Seasfolk" and the like that's come up in the game. To keep him loosely connected to the ongoing story however, I have him setup as a captain of a little crew he's assembled as he sails the realm over! Funny that the Southern Seas may play an important role in the MSQ soon, hmm?
Q: Does your art influence the way you play your FFXIV characters, or is the art depicting your characters a product of your roleplay/fictionalized experiences?
A: Basically the latter. Everything I draw is based loosely around my WoLs (or favorite NPCs) experience or just because I want to draw them in their natural way. I love stories more than anything else and capturing a moment or a feeling in a picture that resonates with me. I draw a lot for myself and what I find enjoyable, which is a bonus of others fall in love with it too!
Q: When you're not drawing FFXIV, what do you find yourself drawing the most?
A: Outside of FFXIV, I also take part in DnD and TTRPG campaigns... so I'm always drawing something or another for those! I rarely draw anything outside of FFXIV these days aside from those few OCs of mine who I've nurtured from the ground up. Some of my characters are also based loosely around the Disgaea and Magica Madoka franchise that closer individuals may recognize.
Q: A lot of your artwork is very ambient, especially for the work you've submitted to the zine! What motivates you to draw those natural and vibrant scenes the most?
A: For the zine, it just so happens that things I were drawing at the time happened to correspond with the theme at the same time! So when I think about things I may or may not submit to the zine, I like to test myself and really try to work on backgrounds a lot more. I tend to shy away from backgrounds because they're truly not my strong suit, but I always give it my best when I do! All of my big pieces tend to be experimental in this way, where I use vibrant random colors that I feel fits my vision of aesthetic.
Q: What are some of your ultimate goals with your artwork--personally or professionally?
A: One of my biggest goals is anatomy... it's strange, but I've always built my art starting from eyes, to the hair, and building off generally from there. Never from a posing perspective which is something I come up with later down the line and hope it looks proper enough. I build off the features that people focus on most, because that's just how anime style feels to me and getting that expression down juuuust right! I'm also not quite satisfied with my rendering at times and wish to improve on that slowly but surely.
Q: That's funny you mention the eyes—when I was a kid, my dad told me to start with the eyes, and now it's a habit that's hard to break for me. Are there any experiments or exercises you're doing to try to improve the anatomy of your art? Any tips you have for other artists who may want to improve in the same ways?
A: So sometimes I will truly try to devote myself to outlining a body pose first... but then by the end I feel I don't have the space to make the face I desire. It's quite the conundrum but something I'll have to face eventually! If you've seen my art with full bodies and backgrounds, you'll probably notice how small the face feels. That's where my current problem lies.
It helps that in FFXIV (and with certain, ahem, gpose tools) I can pose a character a certain way that one can't easily google and kinda go off an in game model while figuring out how to adapt it to my style. Also something that a lot of artists have started doing, like myself, is taking cellphone pictures of our hands or posing a way we want for the camera. I've done it more often than I'd like to admit, but hands are hard and weird! It may sound and feel silly, but it's great to use what you have on hand if you can't find the reference you're looking for. Especially with the current environment around art in general and battling against the dreaded AI.
Q: Are there any art mediums you haven't tried yet that you'd love to try? Tell us why you're so interested, if so!
A: Not in an art way because I'm quite satisfied and content with the digital form. I use your most basic, cheapest Wacom tablet with no screen or anything fancy because I don't care to draw professionally and mostly for myself. That and I'm half blind and have poor depth perception, so hand to monitor coordination just works best for me!
Q: Oh really? What challenges come with drawing for you with some of those sight limitations, if you don't mind my asking? What do you do to overcome it while drawing?
A: So for me, I was basically born without a functioning left eye and I sometimes joke about being a cyclops. But I essentially grew up like this and it doesn't truly effect me aside from certain things... such as driving, 3d movies, anything that requires two eyes to work. For art specifically, I find that I struggle greatly with perceiving distance and often draw something closer or farther than I really wanted. I found this especially hard on screen tablets! I never could make lines meet and struggled greatly for it.
This is where the beauty of digital art comes in. If something appears off, I can move things in the sketch phase and edit things as necessary. Especially useful is being able to flip a canvas and seeing how wonky and off the rails I went, haha. So it's all about flipping the canvas multiple times to ensure everything just looks right and even on all sides.
Q: What is the best advice you can offer to other hobbyist or prospective professional artists out there?
A: Best advice, honestly, is finding something to obsess over. Find something that you find extreme joy over whether it be a specific character, a series, an environment, anything that sparks that feeling of wanting to do something with those emotions. Though you may not give it justice right away, my inspiration has always been to give life to what I loved most. To grow alongside my passions and improve slowly but surely. I've come so far based on these feelings alone as art is something you should enjoy doing in the end. Not for anyone else, but yourself first and foremost! Anything else is a bonus as they share that joy, that journey with you. In time, you'll know whether you want to take that journey to a grander level worth making income on or simply to have your own safe corner to create as you desire.
To find out more about Palastel's art and where to follow them check out their Linktree: https://linktr.ee/palastel
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