Back in 2005 I started playing an online video game and met a few people that became some good friends over the years. We played a game called Final Fantasy XI and we would get on just about every night to play, chat, or just hang out.

The game had groups called Linkshells. If you have a linkshell from a group you could chat with them. The linkshells were used to plan event with other players in the group. So the linkshells I was member of had forums to help plan events. So a course with forums allowing you to add images to the bottom of your comment area, everyone would place some kind of image or wording.

I, at the time, had downloaded a program that let me view the game’s character models and design and pose them the way I wanted. So I started doing my own signature which in turn my friends likes and asked me to design theirs.

People really liked seeing their avatar in their signature area. So I did a few for other linkshell members. I start to playing with real life photos and these avatar. So I took a few pictures my friends had posted and removed them from the picture and replaced them with an avatar.

I kept up just playing with the avatar model program and made some comics of different events from real life or game life.

After a few years, we all started to lose interest or time to keep playing the game. So when our one leader from a linkshell decided it was time to quit playing. The rest of the members asked if I could do a tasteful sending off image for her. So with a mixture of all I have learned while using PhotoShop I designed a nice little image for the splash page of our forum.

Those were fun times for me and some of my friends. We still chat and once in a while we’ll make a special trip to visit each other. I really enjoyed doing all these special images for my fellow gamers. They all enjoyed seeing what I would come up with while designing them. That was one of my favorite thing to do outside of the game.