Fallout 76 Community Spotlight: Shia

Ever since the door to Vault 76 opened, Shia has been surviving the Wasteland one day at a time.

Together, with their trusty friend, Turtle, they adventured through Appalachia. Exploring locations, fighting enemies, and documenting everything they’ve discovered along the way with illustrations and notes on their observations.

During their time in the vault, Shia was demoted from Security to work in Sanitation. “She's not a lone survivor, sole survivor, courier or chosen one, but maybe more the sorts of NPCs you never meet but find their notes and journals littered everywhere that are maybe 20% helpful but hopefully add some flavor and make things more fun.” States Shia, the player behind the character.

In real life, Shia is an artist who has spent the last two years of Fallout 76’s release creating beautiful and creative illustrations of their digital adventures inside Appalachia. They have compiled their artwork into three separate books, The Vault Dweller Journal, Watoga Technical Manual and Bestiary.

“At first they were a way to roleplay with my friend who I played Fallout 76 with, Turtle, as the game didn't really have a text interface to chat at people with.” Shia says. “The Fallout games are fun to play because they're based in real places you can visit in real life if you feel like it, and we loved the idea of Lewis and Clark explorers fumbling around the wasteland. I REALLY loved the idea of making my own Tales of a Junktown Vendor, or Wasteland Survival guide with personal adventures and observations from a character's point of view.”

And they did! Shia filled the pages of each manual with interesting and captivating illustrations using both digital and traditional mediums. “For the paintings it's usually inks and various kinds of coffee and water (sometimes with salt) to get different effects. If it's one of the journal pages I've been making, I'll usually scan it after that and do some photoshop trickery to make it look like it's on a rustic old piece of paper and then digitally doodle stuff over it and add text in.”

Shia has had years to perfect their artwork to what it is today. “Ever since I was a kid, I'd draw on everything and my parents ended up buying big rolls of butcher paper for me so I'd stop doodling on things they wanted to keep.”

Growing up, Shia’s dad influenced a lot of their love of art. “He tried making a living doing calligraphy for a while and always had interesting art supplies around after the fact.” Shia said, then added, “I still use one of his old cork quills today.”

Shia reminisced over memories, “He'd always take watercolor sets with him when we went out camping and do landscapes, and we took a few art classes together. From there I've had a lot of influences that inspired me like Yoshitaka Amano (who I learned about from a Final Fantasy 6 manual), Fred Perry, and various video games (mostly RPGs).”

Moving onto college, Shia obtained and Associates in Art and a Bachleors in Graphic Design which helped get them into doing digital work. Shia used to rely on Photoshop, but after a tablet upgrade, they find themselves now using SAI, Clip Studio and Gimp for their artwork. When it comes to preference, however, Shia prefers a mixture of both traditional and digital. “They both have their strengths. I've always been fond of watercolors though, and over the past few years discovered I really like messing around with ink and adding in things like coffee when I paint or sprinkling salt over a wash. I love the convenience of digital art, but it's always nice having an original piece on actual paper instead of electrons... though I can't count the number of times I was drawing on paper and thinking ‘Oh snap this line isn't ideal, Control + Z ... oh.’”

Art projects can for Shia can take anywhere from a day to half a year depending on the project. “Usually I have a bunch of ideas I'm juggling around at any given time. Sometimes I'll like an idea so much I'll hammer it out in a day (like the first art journal thing that turned into 76 sketch a day marathon.). Sometimes I'll talk with my friend Turtle and we'll toss concepts and random thoughts back and forth, or I'll shelf it for a bit and pick it up down the road when I can think of something to add."

Shia finds inspiration from multiple sources from comics, anime, video games, traditional art, and nature. Sometimes these inspiration bursts will strike obsessions that lead to new hobbies and discoveries for them. “I was enjoying Fallout New Vegas for a while and realized ‘Hey this is near me; I can check these places out in real life!’ which turned into some camping trips, which turned into me finding weird desert radio stations I liked, and a podcast/radio show called ‘Desert Oracle’. I went from hating the desert to painting it a ton, loving camping out there, and suddenly wanting to do a comic set there.”

Gaming communities have also been a great source of inspiration to Shia. “Fallout especially has a great following in groups like the reddit fo76filthycasuals group, podcasts like Chad the Fallout Story, or West Vault Radio or if you want to do a lore binge for inspiration the Shodycast Storyteller stuff.” Shia says. They’ve even done artwork for some of these communities like the Chad podcast.

When it comes to favorite subjects to draw, there isn’t a one single subject that captivates Shia’s creative mind. “Lately I've found myself going between scary ink drawings and paintings or super cute little chibi doodles. If I had a favorite theme to draw, it'd probably be extremely misleading things like adorable horrors or polite folks with horrific appearances. I'm also a big fan of Alice in Wonderland, Cryptids, Joshua Tree park, horror and zombies, and game stuff.”

We asked Shia what their favorite part of the artist process was. “Find out what works, what looks good. Sometimes you'll have it right away and be impressed with your first pass, sometimes you have to play with an idea and see how it looks in a different medium, another style or color pallet. My favorite may be the end result when I'm done and have the finished product in my hand or on screen and my mental side quest tracker checks it off and vanishes and I can focus on the next things.”

Out of all the artwork Shia has done over the years, their favorite comes down to the West Virginia Bestiary. “I'm very pleased with worn brown paper textures and D&D monster manual style illustrations and all the related doodles around the side.”

With so much inspiration and artwork already completed, there needs to be some structure for Shia to decide what to draw next. “Most of my work will be based around a project I've decided to focus on like doing Inktober, because if I sit at home without planning and thinking ‘What shall I do today?’ I'll get nothing done.” Lately, Shia has found themselves doing a lot of journal and book projects so they can assign themselves a number of pages to complete in a week. However, they don’t force themselves to only work on that project at one time. “If something that piques my interest comes up in the meantime, like suddenly wanting to draw cute chibi versions of desert animals or horror paintings of cryptids, I'll ride that wave.”

With the upcoming return of the Brotherhood of Steel on December 1st, Shia will have plenty of new things to add into their survival books. In the meantime, Shia has some advice for all aspiring artists out there. “The best advice I could give is to practice a lot, getting better at something like drawing is a lot like getting into shape and exercising. You'll do better if you spend a certain amount of the day at it and practice a lot, doing lots of life drawing and studies of pictures can't hurt.”

Thanks again for talking with us, Shia. We can’t wait to see what else you create!

You can find more of Shia’s art on Twitter and Deviant art.

Want to nominate someone for a future Community Spotlight article? Head over to our Official Forums and tell us a little bit about them. Until then, we’ll see you next month!