Item Art Commentary

Some background on what influenced the designs for the items I've illustrated. Likely to include some rambling anecdotes as well.

Mist Tree
This one was inspired by some of the spiney logs you see lying around Satorl Marsh; I opened up the game on my Switch and basically copied one (near the Crown Tree landmark) as best I could before stylizing it a little. The red mist is meant to look the same as the wisps of ether that rise around the marsh at night.

Love Source
This is one I really wanted to make sure I did well! It's the most difficult collectopaedia item to get in the game, so it deserved some extra attention. I'm really happy with how it turned out! For fun, here's what the bottle looked like before adding the potion:

Click to reveal image

Water Boatman
I was surprised when I googled "water boatman bug" just to see if anything showed up that it was a real thing. I tried to make mine look a little more fantastical with some turtle-like stylizations. I also kind of feel like the big eyes, colors, and pattern made it look mildly Lisa Frank-adjacent.

Dramatic Night
When Reuel requested this one, I honestly didn't know what I was gonna do for it. Funnily enough, I ended up taking inspiration from the Bass Pro Pyramid shape. I was looking through my camera roll for inspirations, since sometimes I take photos of things that I might be able to use for item refs. I'd gone to the Bass Pro Pyramid not too long ago and for some reason that stuck with me as a fun shape for a strange component. The orange lights are meant to be reminiscent of the orange lighting around Agniratha. Originally there were stars inside the hole in the center, but they got covered up by the black crackle effect, which ended up looking better.

Poisonous Coral
This one was referenced from a photo of Fire Coral, which is a real organism (that is not actually a coral. It's more closely related to a jellyfish) that I did a toxicology presentation on. Fire Coral is typically more yellow-brown or orangeish than the yellow-green this ended up being after all the lighting effects.

Rainbow Zirconia
I had an original blue version of this one before adding more adjustment layers to make it rainbow. For fun, here's the original version below:

Click to reveal image

Shiny Scarab
This was a request from my friend Winter who does not play Xenoblade but was obsessed with Scarabella from Miraculous Ladybug at the time (and probably still currently). I'm really happy with how the colors on this one turned out!

Shin Newt
This one was the first animal that I illustrated. I had a hard time deciding on the background, since up to this point most of the backgrounds had been much simpler, just a color and maybe a gradient. But I felt like with the description of it wanting to be by clear water, it would be difficult to capture properly without a background.

Strong Dandelion
Do you have any idea how hard it is to draw a black flower. Do you have any idea how many black flowers there are in the collectopaedia. I'm dying squirtle
I did keep a slight rainbow gradient on this one because it looked too boring being just monochrome like I need some pizzaz man

Clarity Moss
I distinctly remember drawing this one while listening to a bunch of musical analysis videos by Sideways. It took a lot of time, but I didn't really notice at the time because of all of the videos. My pal Alyce says this one reminds them of the video game Ori, and is their favorite for this reason.

White Plum
This one was a request from my friend Morgan, who doesn't play Xenoblade but I asked her to pick an item for me to draw anyway because I was indecisive. It really should've been whiter, but I intended to work that out with filters, only for the colors to come out so nice while I was drawing it I couldn't ruin it by washing it out too much. So it looks almost like a nomral plum. I did try to make the flesh of it paler, at least.

Gold Dust Illusion
Drew this one on a cruise where I didn't have wifi. I figured it would be one of the easier ones to do without a reference photo.

Sorrow Beetle
I remember drawing this one after sucking really really bad on an exam. I picked it out because of the Sorrow in its name, and drawing it cheered me up :')

Chewy Radish
This is still one of my favorites. It's just a radish, but it's a really dang pretty radish. I figured Colony 9 would have fairly realistic-looking items compared to the other areas, since it's inhabited by Homs and our introduction as players to the world of the Bionis.

Fire Apple
Getting the texture to feel real was the most important part of this one to me. I was just starting to practice that, since I hadn't drawn many studies before, especially digitally. It's pretty much a normal apple, but I think it has a cute sort of charm.

Sweet Wasabi
This was the first one I drew! I was in class at the time and mildly disappointed in my classmates' lack of interest in what wasabi looks like before it's made into the paste you can eat. This one has a lot rougher texture than my later drawings, since at the time, I wasn't planning for these to be nearly as detailed as they ended up.