xD  Certainly not to me!

I appreciate the constructive feedback  When I normally represent fire, it's about heat and a burning glow with outward and explosive energy.  In this case, it has much more soul, more turmoil, and is self-contained rather than expansive.  The emotion I take from the scene resonates in my mind; this was far more strongly shaped by music and nostalgia than most of my artwork.  It also has a very strong "scenic" quality to the content (ground, depth, objects further away and radiant light).  Although I consider Phaethic Escapade technically superior in framing and balance (and at a time was tied with this for my favorite image), I find the emotion I extract from this more meaningful to me now.

I'm ever so slowly working on a related piece to this (same inspiration source, different scene from the game), and hope to have it finished by like 2025 lmao: Lament 2; maybe replaying the game again will give me the motivation I need to finish it.

I think knowing how my brain functions wouldn't help anything.  Then again, I really don't know how it works entirely either -- and despite my analytical nature, I would prefer to just enjoy doing some things rather than needing to understand how exactly I do them.


I've tried to understand how I do things, and there's a combination of continuously firing pattern-recognition, combined simultaneously with gut feelings of what I like or don't like (and the whole "gut feelings" thing isn't something I have yet been able to explain logically).

I will note that I intend to stream (trying to) make artwork tomorrow -- both headset stuff and screen sharing (should be found in my journal if you want information on it), so that would be as good a place as any to see and ask things as I'm working on stuff. XD

This is tied with Phaethic Escapade for my favorite thing that I've ever made.  I really love how it looks...music is an amazing source of inspiration, and as much of what I make is affected by my own state of mind, I think the emotion in the image itself is much stronger than it is in most of my other work.

I don't know where you went, but it's very good to hear from you, that's for sure  I hope you're doing well these days!  If you want to chat or something, feel free to note me and I'll give you my skype or something.

Certainly.  Provided you don't upload the image to wallpaper sites, claim it as your own, or things to that extent, I have absolutely no issues with you doing so

It indeed is a render  I'm glad you like how it looks, even if it's a bit abstract to understand.  If you've ever played Twilight Princess, then I can offer perhaps a better analogy that might help