Shade's Realm

Anything and everything that interests me. About 60% video games-related, 30% personal projects, and 10% plants.

[tanblaque]

RQ by: @realmofshade !

I tried adding a few of my favorite tidbits (?) from that room into this art. Though originally I did make a sketch of just the room literally as itself. I think there have been tons of artwork about that room already so I've settled with something a lil more experimental for me, trying out different brushes and technicalities. Not sure if I should finish the bottom sketch as an artwork of its own.

[tanblaque]

[realmofshade]

I fell off the wagon for a bit but I want! To finish drawing! My baby!!! With Stories 3 on the very near horizon, what better time to make more progress on my Pukei-Pukei picture? c:

[ruderubicante]

Walkies (Rain Edition)

[realmofshade]

Happy end of 2025, and welcome 2026! Once again, a smaller year in terms of how many games I beat. But hey, look, some long RPGs made it in, including the long-time-coming Harvestella :)

We can blame Fantasy Life i for taking over my life, I think. I've sunk over 100 hours in that game it's so FUN oh my goodness. I did, in fact, get Borderlands 4, and I'm about 70% through it currently? So we're getting there. Also just started Pokemon Legends Z-A and Expedition 33. 2026 is certainly starting strong!

Favourite game was Fantasy Life i, easy pick. Harvestella was also really good, I'll give it credit. It probably didn't help that I started that game around the same time as Tales of Arise, and they both feature...a lot of the same story beats, weirdly enough. I ended up putting Harvestella down a lot but I had a fun time with it, and I do appreciate the QoL/modern mechanics it brought to the farming sim and RPG genre.

Looking forward to 2026 and maybe, just maybe, putting a dent in my backlog! Oh, and also the new Monster Hunter Stories, that's gonna be super hype 😎

[realmofshade]

For my friend for Christmas, I coloured us both a matching dragon illustration with our favourite colours (mine orange, hers pink). Really love how they turned out, so here they are <3 Lineart is NOT by me. It's by Slaya Art (https://www.deviantart.com/slayaart/art/Hanami-picnic-happy-dragon-coloring-page-1170510579)

Medium is alcohol marker base, coloured pencil shading and white gel pen finishing details.

WIP stages under the cut:

[realmofshade]

Got my Celldweller 10-year anniversary End of an Empire coin today (the gold one). Ten years ago, I bought the original coin (silver). Can't believe it's been a decade since that album came out, it still rocks ❤️

[realmofshade]

Snapped a pic of the sky the other night while taking the dog out before bed. The clouds and the way the moon illuminated everything were breathtaking, honestly.

[realmofshade]

I know nothing about Fossil Fighters but the vivosaurs look pretty so here's Teffla! I actually prefer Papygon's colours, but figured Teffla would look more vibrant on paper <3

We ignore that the shade of yellow I have is slightly off, shhh

[realmofshade]

After over 800 hours across many, many years, I've finally done it. I've completed my Pokemon Uranium living shinydex, including all available nuclear Pokemon. Plus a bonus of my shiny hunted Mystery Gifts :)

The gap from 192-194 is because the Uranium dex isn't actually complete, so those Pokemon are currently unobtainable.

Longest single hunt was Urayne (shocker, I know), clocking in at 42 hours and 42 minutes. Longest group hunt was for a couple shiny nuclear Pokemon at the first power plant because I was dumb and thought I didn't need to get the shiny charm that early. Joke's on me, I spent nearly 70 hours there trying to find the two 5% encounters ;-; I learned my lesson after that and promptly spent the next few hours trading Pokemon over from my main file to get the shiny charm.

Base shiny odds in the game are 1/1024. With shiny charm, they drop to 1/341. Urayne and Mystery Gift Pokemon do not get affected by the shiny charm, so they will always be 1/1024."Base shiny odds in the game are 1/1024. With shiny charm, they drop to 1/341. Urayne and Mystery Gift Pokemon do not get affected by the shiny charm, so they will always be 1/1024.

"Shade, why did you do this? 800 hours is absurd!" Yes, I'm a masochist, move along.

[realmofshade]

Are we already at the end of 2024? Guess I better post which games I've beaten this year!

...Not as many as I thought I had, all things considered 😅 Mostly RPGs and Pokemon yet again, no one is surprised lol.

Currently on the go, I still have Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (I'm on the last main story mission), as well as Harvestella. My backlog (still) includes Bayonetta 2, 3, and Cereza and the Lost Demon. Also various monster tamers including Coromon, Temtem, and Cassette Beasts. The only game I'm really looking forward to in 2025 is Borderlands 4, though I'm sure if the Switch successor gets announced and new game trailers drop, I'll be hyped for some of those too.

Picking a favourite game this year is tough. Tales of Arise has some incredibly smooth gameplay and makes me YEARN for a remaster of Tales of Symphonia in that style. I would pay so much money to play a version like that, gah. Beating Magi-Nation was also a fun achievement, since it holds a lot of nostalgia for me (and I've never beaten it before). Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince was also a fun romp, though the gameplay is better than the story imo.

Anyways, onward to 2025!

[realmofshade]

…Soooo Fiverr just released the most awful marketing email I've seen in recent times. The title was "Celebrate the talent - not the tool" and hinted that it was discussing AI generation. I'm thinking "great! They're gonna talk about how true art is made from scratch by humans! Not just mushed through a digital tool in 5 seconds to create utter slop that's built with unethical training models, designed to steal without compensation!"

Y'all, I was dead wrong. The email linked to a video titled "Nobody Cares! The Musical" which was a minute-long AI-generated satire whose message boiled down to "yeah, lots of people use AI, that's fine. Just stop yelling about how you're using it. Nobody cares that you used AI, they just want the results of it". It encouraged people to keep using AI, because buyers like the results and only YOU can input the correct string of words to generate what they want.

I stared in disbelief for a solid 30 seconds after watching it. A site that celebrates and spotlights freelancers, often for voice acting, art and coding, just sent out an email blast encouraging people to use AI for their PAID WORK. I don't even know how to process this.

[realmofshade]

For anyone who plays Creature Creator, I made a Pukei-Pukei model for y'all! Just search up "Pukei-Pukei" in the Factory/Steam Workshop. He's not very fast, but he is cute :')

[endivinity]

A retouch of an old old piece! Still super proud of it, didn't need all that much work to bring it up to standard. Mizutsune taking a cozy lil nap!

[realmofshade]

…so I’m playing Nintendogs Labrador Edition (since I never had it as a kid, I had the Chihuahua one), and uh… it occurred to me that it would be fun to make the dogs I get into lil OCs and draw them and post about them? Vaguely supernatural, vaguely early 2000s dog OC aesthetic. Anyone interested? |D

Also to spice it up, their one piece of clothing/accessory they get is whatever they pick up first on a walk! There could be shenanigans with that. The game has some WILD accessories for the pups.

[realmofshade]

Bumping this up 10,000 years later to show off the first ref for my starter Labrador, Astro! He found the Green Leather Collar, very basic, but I think it suits him :)

My lore so far is he actually comes from outer space. I don't know how he got here. The "Weird Alien" item is actually a real alien, and Astro recognizes them as a fellow extraterrestrial, but they both mostly keep to themselves. His best friend is Archie's dog Spot since they have the same collar. He is weirdly wary of Adam's dog Bear, who's usually so friendly...wonder what their history is.

So far he's my only dog, dunno how I'm gonna decide who to get next lol. Either gonna pick my fave or pull a number from a hat, I guess? The German Shepherd puppies are cute.

I should probably also mention that my goal with Nintendogs is to get 99 of each item I can, because I want to see what happens after. Does it still "give" you the item, but stop counting/max at 99? Does it crash? Does it not give you an item? We're gonna find out...eventually.

[realmofshade]

I don't post about Neopets much but look. My baby boy, finally looking how he should :')

It only took like 3 hours of wading through lag and broken pages to get him lmao |D

[acatpiestuff]

He knew what he had done was evil