If you read my hands on preview of the Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn beta, you probably know that it’s an extremely pretty game. It’s predecessor, Final Fantasy XIV, looked definitely beautiful as well. It’s a natural course of things that where there’s beauty, artistic spirits gather, and often contribute to add even more beauty.
This is exactly what happened with FFXIV. Quite a few players started to develop the hobby of touching up their screenshots in Photoshop or similar programs, expressing their creativity without necessarily drawing, but simply taking what the game offered and changing it to fit their taste, often with absolutely amazing results.
This little piece is dedicated to some of those artists (I have no qualms in calling them that), because what they do deserves to be seen by a wider audience and by those that aren’t familiar with the game and its community. Keep in mind, of course, that while the artwork showcased below uses in-game screenshots as a base, the game itself doesn’t look quite like that despite looking lovely in its own right.
Below you can find a selection of five artists to represent them all. I apologize to those I did not include, most probably because I don’t know about them. If you know any great ones I did not feature, feel free to post a link to their galleries in the comments for everyone to enjoy. By clicking on each name you’ll be able to go check out the gallery of each artist directly; most of them have many pieces that are worth seeing, and I can’t include them all here. It’s also important to mention that the original screenshots come from both the original Final Fantasy XIV and from the beta of A Realm Reborn.
The featured picture above is by Ayura. All the artwork in this article has been included with explicit permission by its author.
Hakodume Mikan
