The Riptide Pirates (Riptide Concept Art)

Jay was drawn by Nada!
Chip was drawn by Ren!
Gillon, Gryffon, and Alphonze were drawn by Saturn!
Ollie, Drey, and Queen were drawn by Shan!
Earl and Roofus were drawn by Kiwi!

PLEASE consider following and supporting these talented and powerful artists! It is consistently a pleasure to work with all of them and their work brings our stories and characters visually to life. We all hope you enjoy perceiving and drawing your own versions!

THE RIPTIDE PIRATES

THE CAPTAINS

I didn't have much involvement in the pieces or designs for the captain of this crew!

Zach Bizlychannel had a really silly red pirate captain outfit reference from like a Spirit Halloween stock photo LOL. The rest was between him and Ren, who killed it. He finally looks like his own person! I did design the swords alongside Ren that ended up completing his overall look, a gift that Roofus began to craft with Amber in hopes to keep Chip safe, possibly even out of grief and guilt of their failure from the past.

Charlie Slimecicle worked with Saturn who is a master at armor and design, and I'm really thrilled to see his Level 99 paladin warlock sorcerer fighter world of warcraft design idea ended up looking so amazing! The gloves are meant to represent something Gillion hired Roofus to work on that has not yet made it to him in canon.

Condi Condifiction and Nada created the only woman ever, and I will only take credit for gaslighting Condi into taking the bangs out of her face and adding golden hoop earrings to show bravery and power. The rest was all them, one of the last things we got to work with Nada on before she became a mom! Congrats nada. <3 Congrats to you condi for creating Jay! Arguably more impressive! (joke)

I believe these artists are all here on the Patreon, so maybe look for their comments if they have any experience or excitement to share! Surely you'll find it on their Twitters too! 

THE CREW

Ollie

For both Ollie and Drey I started with hair design, I knew Ollie would have longer hair, which is the like only reference I sent to Shan before they came back with almost the perfect design for the little boy we keep on the ship. The goal was to make him look more pirate like, but also fancier since they were previously very rich. I had an idea to give him a vest and make his undershirt sleeveless as an ode to Uncle Marshall John, but we ended up keeping the sleeves and giving the vest barbaric fur. He also has fun Easter eggs like the eyepatch, Ichabod's feather, Chip's original red bandana, and the mountain giant belt of strength! This character, that I had no plans for, is probably one I'm most proud of, and am so happy to see how this boy has grown. I hope you enjoy his design, and his time he has left in the story alongside the Riptide Pirates.

Drey

Drey was a bit more complex because we had to figure out how to work in, functionally, and aesthetically, slings into the design. I found interesting references of "Immobilizers," or binders, that was enough to give Shan the inspiration needed to complete it! My only other requests were an all black outfit, and the classic DM Haircut since honestly Matthew Mercer is who I'd cast for the voice of Drey.

It was Shan's idea to keep the blue in his design, very wonderful choice. I wonder why he holds on to his family Ferin Pin? hehe.

Gryffon

As with all the crew, I wanted to give them the pirate vibe. At the beginning of this design process I doodled a silhouette and rough idea of Gryffon's clothing that I based my description i sent to Saturn off of. I wanted Gryffon to look like a mix of his culture experience, from being a Monster Hunter and enthusiast, to spending time around the technology of Edison kingdom, to hunting pirates for gold, and to finally being a pirate himself. This is where the "give everyone the Riptide Jolly Roger," design idea started as well. A lot of the references I used besides my own doodle were like outfits and belts, but two big ones I'd say are Barret from Final Fantasy 7, and Ryuji's X shaped belt from Persona 5. The heavy lifting of the art process is of course taken care of by the artists, Saturn in this case did it flawlessly. A lot of their ideas mixed super well with mine. I went to them for this because of their original design for Gryffon way back when he was just a description.

Alphonze

For this bad ass robot man, I basically had a lot more references to send, and went with bullet points of my key design ideas rather than a big description. Stuff like the color of his eyes change depending on emotion, the face resembling a skull, the ALF-ONZ3 painted on him, etc. The coolest thing we came up with I think though is the anchor chain weapons. I just recently finished playing both God of War games, but had came up with this design way before. Any one else that has played, you can essentially imagine the anchors on Alphonze's forearms to work very similarly to the Chaos blades! I literally just had this revelation just now while writing this LOL.

Queen

Queen WAS NOT supposed to join the crew anytime soon. THEY WEREN'T EVEN SUPPOSED TO HAVE A DESCRIPTION OR ART. I just put them in the line of Earl's new tavern to FORESHADOW their introduction at some point in the future. Nevertheless, this is D&D, so we improv. Their name of course comes from us listening to Bohemian Rhapsody during the session, but their personality is actually incredibly inspired and influenced by a character by the name of Siegfried from the anime, "Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple." This is the first anime I ever watched in my entire life, and so including Queen and their quirks like, "LALALALA!!," is very specifically my way of showing love to an anime that introduced me to so many other great anime, games, characters, and voice acting for that matter. If you go watch that show you will immediately hear the voice I am basically imitating and slowly making my own. Anyways, design wise this was mostly left up to Shan! I once again doodled some ideas after their initial sketch, but it was mostly adding musical motifs to the design they came up with such as the sheet music thing wrapping around their hat. Queen canonically would use any pronouns, as I know some people have asked. Initially everyone in the session referred to them as a he, but after some consideration, when we weren't improving, I honestly felt more fitting to refer to them as she or, as I do more commonly, just they.

Earl

I promise it was an accident... but Earl is literally dressed like a rich, old, fruit loving, Luffy. And now, by way of improv, he is seeking some mysterious unnamed legendary fruit. I swear I didn't write any of that. I just wanted him to be swimming in money, biches, and fame, and I knew he would hate having responsibility again, and want to set back out to sea after fulfilling his wife's dream before she passed. Earl is not special by any means, but he has a super human work ethic. You'd never guess by looking at him. If he had been there for the Limonde stand... oh god.

Roofus

Roofus is not canonically or officially apart of the Riptide Pirates, nor is he even a pirate at all anymore. I thought it'd be sweet to include him though, since he is still a great friend and ally to both The Riptide Pirates, and The Grandberry Pirates. Roofus' character and initial design was too heavily inspired by Critical Role's Pumat Sol. Which was okay at first, because including a character inspired by one from a campaign that got me so heavily into D&D and its story telling aspect was my goal anyways. But, I wanted him to have his own personality in the way he dressed, especially to contrast the way he grew up. I also didn't have a written description for him when they met, so I was very happy to have time to think on it and come up with this alongside Kiwi! He's just a simple and neat guy now. You may also wonder why he comes across older when he speaks, this is mostly because the canine race in my world has a shorter average lifespan than humans. Just as dogs are irl, usually. Not to say he will be gone anytime soon.

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Well, thats all for this concept art drop for now!! By the end of the campaign I'm sure you'll be able to find things like Chip's swords on D&D beyond! Maybe we can have something like that for every character, you know like Gillion's subclass,  the things Jay invents, and NPC statblocks.

I'm very happy with how this campaign has been developing, and can't wait to see where we go in the new year. I'd love to hear about your memories, your favorite moments, things you appreciate, things you'll miss, really anything you want to talk about in the comments of this post.

If theres anything I missed, or that your curious about, ask away too!

Please look forward to the next Riptide Concept Art post, and I sorry this one took very long to arrive! Wanted every art piece to be finished and included.

- Grizzly