Our monthly Community Spotlight articles intend to highlight the most active members of the For Honor community, and the cool things that they do. Create and share on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or Twitch and you too can appear here someday!
For this month’s article, we had a chat with obake_kasa, creator of the creatives_for Twitter account and Discord server who shares many For Honor artworks, cosplays, and community creations. He is also the one behind the big For Honor artists collaboration you discovered a few months ago!
The Feast
by
Various Artists
MEET CREATIVES_FOR!
**USERNAME - **creatives_for
**SPECIALTY - **Sharing community creations
**DISCOVERED FOR HONOR IN - **January 2017
**FACTION - **Samurai
**CURRENT MAIN - **Nobushi
**FAV MOMENT - **The reception of the first crossover artwork
FOLLOW CREATIVES_FOR ON
Twitter Discord
WHO IS CREATIVES_FOR?
How did you come up with the username creatives_for?
The username ‘creatives_for’ was what I settled on because of the Twitter handle character limit. If it allowed more characters, it would've obviously been ‘forhonorcreatives’, and in retrospect, ‘fh_creatives’ would've been a much better tag. I guess the current one could be seen as a bunch of artists / creative folks working together for something which is what we ended up evolving into with the collaborations.
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How and when did you discover For Honor?
I first discovered For Honor by chance through some news on the Open Beta, back before launch. Shorty after, I ended up trying it on PS4 and fell in love with the unique combat as well as the really different premise of all these completely different factions of warriors clashing on the battlefield. As soon as it was out, I couldn't resist not buying it.
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Which faction do you belong to?
My faction has always been Samurai just because in the Open Beta I had played exclusively the Samurai. Also, being a bit of a weeb, it's a given! The idea of playing as a Samurai was one of those things you kind of dream as when you're a kid, so getting to choose them in this 3 way all out war was a no brainer.
The only character I've got about Rep. 5 is Nobushi (she's at Rep. 51 currently) so it would be safe to say she's probably my main. When the game came out hidden stance was the most fun thing, and I formed a playstyle during the first few seasons not learning to parry, and relying on dodges which would 100% not hold up now but it was fun while we were all still learning. Her fashion at launch was top tier too and even though she's got so many ornaments, I've actually stuck with the same octopus as my ornament through all my years of playing.
What made you want to be a part of our community?
It's actually a bit of a long story on why I wanted to join this community. At this point I'd been playing the game for just under two years and I happened to enter an EnglishButter giveaway for one of those community award pins they gave out a while back. When it arrived, I was super happy but it felt a little weird being one of the few who had one of these pins but didn't earn it. So I made a promise to myself that I'd eventually earn one.
Around the same time as this, I'd started making voxel art and tried making some renditions of areas of my favourite maps which got noticed online by Eric Pope (previous Community Developer), and that was a huge moment for me because I'd never even interacted with a dev before – let alone gotten recognition from one. That point onwards, I decided to go all in on the voxel art which in turn lead to finding other For Honor artists too, and it all kind of kicked off from there.
Cooking
by
KingOfTheFoxes, Athrasill, chorrainder, midiankai
What other hobbies do you have? What do you do outside For Honor?
My biggest hobby outside of For Honor and gaming in general is probably guitar. As much as I love playing video games, it's one of those hobbies I can feel a little guilty about spending way too much time on, so I try to fill in the time with music. Guitar is also one of those things where if you've been having a tough match being toe stabbed by 4 Gladiators for 10 minutes straight, it can be nice to just swap over to guitar for a bit before queuing back up again.
On which social media do you feel most comfortable sharing your passion with the community and why?
There is no doubt in my mind Twitter is the best place to share across all the social media. While Instagram has some great features, it lacks the ability to share links and have them clickable, which is crucial to what I do. If I can't credit the artist’s work I share properly, then it's not right to do so – as there is a fine line between sharing and stealing. It's also where a lot of the artists I love are most active, and opposed to Reddit or Facebook, it’s the easiest place to have an engaging conversation over a post or picture. The retweet ability is also a gift from the gods, as if possible it's always better to just share over reposting which Twitter makes super easy.
What’s your favorite For Honor moment/story?
That's a really hard one! It would have to be between the first collaboration we did and being sent that community pin I mentioned previously. The feeling of actually being sent the pin rather than winning it by chance was a big deal for me personally, but the journey we went on over the course of a few months with those 13 artists was like nothing I've done before. From the initial planning and early stages of sketching, watching it all unfold and helping bring it all together was one thing, but the reception we got to it when we showed everyone was way greater than we ever thought it would be ! It really felt like the art community was more in unison than ever before.
MORE ABOUT ENGAGING WITH THE COMMUNITY
Snowman
by
SPINGFIRE, SemPirate, the_robag, Breri_
What made you want to create a Twitter account and Discord server dedicated to For Honor content creations?
The reason I wanted to create a way of sharing the content – mainly artworks – of others, all in one place, is because I noticed how many artists were going under the radar. For the size of this community, it's crazy how many artists there are producing content daily cross all platforms, like Deviant Art, Pixiv, Tumblr, Reddit, and the list goes on. The rush you get when someone working on the game you love picks out your work and kind of says "Hey look how great this is" is a lot more than some people would imagine, because it can cause a knock on butterfly effect of passion, and further artwork. The idea I had was how great would it be to be able to help people along the way and get more recognition? Sharing work from someone with very little following for it to then get the attention it deserves, and them to go on to create more is the best feeling, especially when when you pool all those people in one place (hence the discord server), and have them bounce off each other with ideas and creations.
What relation do you have with For Honor artists in general?
I'd happily say I've formed friendships with a fair amount of artists in the community, mainly through our Discord, but also a few through Twitter as well. If you split up the For Honor community between all the different parts, I would like to think that the artists are the friendliest out of the lot, everyone kind of just gets along then supports and helps each other out when they need it.
How did you come up with the artists crossover idea?
So it was actually just after a seeing a similar crossover of artists from the Rainbow Six Siege community (about 6 people involved if I remember). Chorrainder retweeted it, saying something like “The For Honor community should do this too”, and I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to bring together all the artists I'd been talking to the months prior. I replied to him straight away saying “Well, let’s do it, then!” and tagged some of the people I knew needed to be involved for it to be great to get on board straight away. Then within a day we had 13 people all full of ideas and energy ready to make the biggest collaboration For Honor had seen yet.
How long does this kind of project take?
We started off super slow because none of us had really done anything like it before. We started at the beginning of July, believe it or not, and spent the first few weeks refining the characters’ positions and getting ideas before we began. The long timeframe was my fault; as I hadn't coordinated artists before, I had no idea how long it would take to meet certain deadlines, so was way too lax and we probably could've done it in a month, really. This is something we improved in our second collaboration, which was the Winter Postcards collaboration. This one had more artists involved, however we managed to get it completed from the initial idea to printed physically in a month, using tighter deadlines for the characters and backgrounds. The way we usually break it up is spending the first week brainstorming, and then there will be a line art deadline, a coloured deadline and a final deadline where it's all brought together. It can all depend on who's involved though, as everyone works at their own pace.
**Snowball Fight **
by
Pyro7380, Vector0098, Krekkov, rleverite, SILENTSCOPEjz15
Do you have any upcoming projects you would like to share with the community? What’s your proudest project up to date?
We have 2 projects on the go currently. One, which as you might expect is another art collaboration. This year, we aim to try and release at least one per season. However, they will vary in the amount of people involved. The second project is super secret and very few people know about it. It's too early stages to talk about now, but let's just say something very exciting is on the horizon.
The project I'm most proud of is probably our first collaboration, as it came together better than we could've imagined. But it is a close tie with our Christmas project, because working with a clear goal in mind of raising money for charity was a great time. It had all involved in high spirits for the month and a half we were working on it, paying off in the end as with the help of many content creators / streamers we managed to raise a decent amount towards the Ocean Cleanup charity.
What is the most challenging for you as an “artwork organizer”?
The most challenging thing when organising the collaborations, would probably be trying to get everyone on the same page. Generally, everyone gets what's going on, but the way we do it is usually a Google Docs spreadsheet with all the information on, and then then explaining in Discord after how it’s all going down – that’s not really difficult, it just takes time. The harder thing is probably convincing everyone they can't just draw Knights. When sharing artwork, the hardest thing will be finding the best way to credit someone if all you have is a repost. Let's say someone reposts on Reddit and I want to share it, I then have to “reverse image”-search it and go through all the options to find the original artist, which again isn't too difficult but can take a lot of time when you have to do it for multiple images.
Any last word for the community?
I'd say never be afraid to pick up the pen and get creating. I've seen the progress some people have made in real time, and you wouldn't believe it. We're lucky that we have such a wealth of inspiration with For Honor and the community certainly doesn't take it for granted! Keep doing what you're doing and I can't wait to see even more new artists enter the scene in the future!
Thanks again for the spotlight it means a lot.
We hope you enjoyed this month's Community Spotlight!
Want to discover more about creatives_for? You can find him on Twitter and Discord.
In case you missed it, check out our last article about cosplaying Apollyon with Germia.
And if you haven’t already, join the For Honor Community on Twitter, Twitch, and Reddit.
