My Backstory

My MMO Beginnings

I must admit, my first MMO was Everquest, but I didn’t even make it past the 30 day free trial. As a magic user I bored quickly of bashing bats and oversized hornets, then running back to the gate when things turned ugly. With a long history of pencil and paper adventuring I found in incredibly frustrating to find a group. No one wanted to group with a noob, especially one running from bats and hornets.

But years later Sony launched Star Wars Galaxies, and me being the huge Star Wars geek that I am, well I had to jump in. I took to the Star Wars universe much better than the swords and sorcery world. Lucky for Sony too, since I was willing to put up with many more frustrations and bugs as long as I got to run around in a world blasting stormtroopers. I played in the SWG world for over two and a half years…by then all the people I knew and played with in-game had had enough of the “frustrations” and made a mass exodus to other games, mainly World of Warcraft (WoW).

Becoming a Hero

But before WoW, I caught a glimpse of a pre-release box for City of Heroes and thought how cool it would be to create a superhero and run around saving the world. I grabbed the box, got in on the beta side of the things and never looked back. I’ve played CoH and CoV for over three years now, and with at least 14 ‘regular’ characters, I have a serious case of altitis. And at least once a week I get the idea for another superhero or super villain. In an effort to get the majority of my characters at least into the 20 level range, I’ve learned to subdue those urges to create more and more characters.

I’ve also played around with Guild Wars, Auto Assault, Lord of the Rings Online and the beta of Tabula Rasa all to various extents. What intrigues me the most about MMOs is the ability to create and develop characters and stories in these online worlds. Not only can I recite stories about in-game experiences with my main characters, in most cases I have in-depth back stories on each character and, thanks to bedtime stories with the kids, extended stories that could never happen within the rules of the online game.

In short, these games have served as the perfect tool for creating stories. Stories not entirely scripted by someone else, and the not same for anyone else.

Drawing from Experience

I began drawing from MMOs as a way to capture and enhance the stories and characters that were being created. My first, was a portrait of my brother’s City of Heroes character Marshal Glen, named after his son. I figured, given the origin of the name, and the “adventures” we’d taken together in CoH, he may want something he could keep that would out live the game. I’m honored to say it now hangs in his living room.

That’s the essence of why this site exists. It's the chance to capture your character in a way that will hopefully be viewable for many years to come.

If I can give another player the opportunity to share the ultimate vision of their character with others, or possibly even view their own character in an entirely new way then I feel I've done my job.