Niche Gamer Nation and Fellow Fishes! Unite Up!

Self Critique: There are some design flaws on Miika in regards to her outfit. It’s hard to say how. It’s easier if you saw the original design of Mika and compare that one and this one to see were exactly I messed up design-wise. Namely, take a look at the collarbone area and the codpiece. I seem to have gotten a better hang of shading in angled metal, but I’ll need more practice with both concave and convex metal molds.

www.nichegamer.net/media/2014/…

I guess it’s no mistake that I found out about NicheGamer right about the time Gamergate started. Besides my own Wired Fish Network site, I virtually stopped reading a majority of the sites I used to go to. The only sites I still had bookmarked were Siliconera and DualShockers. Then in pops Niche Gamer, and that’s were I found a new place to read about Japanese games without the political pandering and puritanical lens that some mainstream sites tend to view Japanese games with. I became a regular commenter on their open forums, and queued up their podcast when I was working on BladeLadies 2nd (and other artwork after I finished it).

Mika here, the one riding Finne, is their mascot. I got the idea after some pointed out Kotaku’s old mascot, which is probably retired given Kotaku’s depressingly political stance as of late. img.gawkerassets.com/img/17gme…

While Kotaku had always been looked at at the tabloid of videogame journalist sites, it still had a charm back then that made me visit the place. It was the good old days in other words. So in homage to the good old days as well as moving forward without them, I drew Mika of Niche Gamer riding Finne of The Wired Fish, a crossover of two videogame site mascots.

Done on Gimp 2.8. Intuose4 tablet used.

Mika and Niche Gamer is © Brandon Orselli
Finne and The Wired Fish is © DeadPhoenX