Gundam Chaos is Calling

Last year I shared a bunch of the art that I’ve done for Final Fantasy Randomizer’s tournaments over the years. It’s a varied collection of ideas and styles as I’ve played around with concepts that drew my fancy. Another year has gone by and that means even more creative ideas have come along, letting me dabble in all sorts of creative styles. So, as with last year, let’s look back and see some of the cool designs that I managed to create:

Winter Tournament 2024: Winter Robot Wars Chaos Wing X

I shared this thumbnail last year as a tease of what was to come. It’s a Gundam-inspired bit of art with a fully custom drawn robot done by me. The inspiration for this was that when the committee for the tournament was put together, committee chair LordFizzlebeef put a joke question on the volunteering form, “what’s your favorite gundam.” He is, as you might expect from that question, a giant fan of the Gundam franchise (nearly as big a fan of that franchise as I am with Castlevania), and the question was just there to make the volunteers laugh. Except then the volunteers took it as an idea for the theme for the event, and everyone just rolled with it.

I really do love this layout. The robot’s form and colors are directly inspired by Chaos, the final boss from Final Fantasy, which is also why the robot has claws, horns, spikes on its head, and giant wings. We had to nail the look so it did, indeed, look like Chaos if he were a giant robot. And then, drawing inspiration from various posters for Gundam Wing, I found some public domain shots of space and trees, stitched it all together, and we have the final design. Strong colors, high contrast, and a striking central image. It really works well.

Spring Duck Bootcamp 2024 (and Other Events)

Following the Winter Tournament, the community always puts on a lengthy New Player program, the Duck Bootcamp (because we call our new players “ducklings”), which is joined by a Platypus Party (our intermediate players were jokingly called platypi and it stuck) and capped by a new player tournament, the Duck Derby. In the past years I did designs based on Outrun and F-Zero, but I wanted a change of pace for this year’s events. So I went in a different racing direction and drew ideas from the hover-vehicle game, Jet Moto.

Honestly, I don’t feel like this was my best work. The overall design is nice enough, and I like the look of the hovering duck cars, but I feel like there’s a spark missing from the layout. It doesn’t draw the eye the way I’d like. While it was fine enough, I don’t think this design is going to last multiple years. I’m already thinking of something different for 2025’s Duck events.

Summer Bingo 2024: Rock Out with the Lockout

Past bingo events were DAB (Double-Anti Bingo, wherein the players each pick one line their opponent has to complete, the “anti” part, and then they have to complete that line plus a second bingo line, the “double” part, to win), but this year the community went a different direction and decided to do Lockout Bingo. That style of play involves completing 13 tiles (of the full 25) before the other player is able, although we also put in a twist that you could complete one line and kill Chaos instead to win. But specifically the name for the event came to me and it stuck instantly.

Of note, we originally called it “Rock Out with Your Lockout”, which sounds way dirtier, but then we had to pull back and realize this would be broadcast on other channels, and not just our own, and so we tamed it down slightly. The original name was funnier, I think, but this worked well enough.

For the bingo designs I tend to go with some kind of casino or bingo hall vibe. This time around I drew inspiration from shots of Vegas at night for a kind og “casino night” vibe. I like the strong purple colors, with the feeling of sunset, and while the design is simple it is eye-catching. Overall I think this one really works.

Summer Co-Op 2024

Our annual Co-Op tournament is always a weird one because we very rarely have an actual theme for it. Other tournaments get special themes and names (see above and below) but for some reason that hasn’t usually been the case for Co-Op (the 2022 event was the only one to have any kind of theme to it at all, and that wasn’t repeated). So usually I let the committee suggest ideas until something strikes my fancy.

For this year, committee chair Dani suggested classic maps from the 17th and 18th centuries. The kinds of maps that were done in hand drawn ink, with “here there be dragons” and the like written in blank spaces. I looked around for a few different types of maps like this, and then settled on a globe layout over a traditional flat map (because I thought it broke up the space better). The resulting layout had a very classic map feel to it, with just enough little flourishes to speak to Final Fantasy.

Tower of Ordeals: Tournament of Champions

This event was improvised and thrown together on the fly almost by accident. There were some in the community that wanted “more competition”, and others really wanted something where the hardest of the hardcore players were able to duke it out. The resulting tournament that came from it settled on a tournament of champions format, where anyone in the community that had won an event (and, as you can see, we have a lot of events so we have a lot of champions) could participate.

The name for the events comes from various locations that have appeared in the Final Fantasy series, such as the Castle of Ordeals (Final Fantasy) and Mount Ordeals (Final Fantasy IV), a trial to prove you are worthy. That felt fitting. And then we went with “tower” since it was a bracket tournament and players had to fight their way “to the top”. And that informed the layout, letting everything quickly come together. Simple but effective.

SpeedGaming Live 2024

While not specifically a Final Fantasy Randomizer tournament, the community did participate in the online and live portions of SGL, and I designed the artwork for the event (as I have every year since 2019). As such, it seems fitting to share it here.

In past years I went with a retro, 1980s vibe. Bright colors, night sky, grids, cityscape. Do a Google image search for “retro 1980s poster” and you’ll see all kinds of variants of that theme. After doing that for a while I felt like we had to push away from that, find a new vibe since it was kind of played out year after year. Last year I went slightly more comic book-style with the art, and this year I pushed that even further. I kept the cityscape but verged into more pop art and comic themes. I think the resulting layout is bright and bold while still feeling in line, in a way, with the event designs of the past.

Fall League 2024: League of Monsters: All Fiends Attack!!

Each Autumn I’ve done a different horror-themed layout for Fall League, since the tournament overlaps with Halloween. The first year was just a Halloween tinged design, but then I went with candy dropping blood, followed by a Hitchcock theme and then a 1950s sci-fi horror theme. This year we needed something else that was horror, and since we opened the year with giant robots, it was suggested that we close out the year with giant monsters. Thus, a GodzillaThe acknowledged King of the Monsters, Gozilla has grown far beyond his early days as a nuclear fallout allegory into one of the biggest, and longest running, franchises ever.-style layout.

Looking around only I saw a few different images of Godzilla against a stark background, either the monster in red against black, or the monster in black against a color. That was interesting to me, so I went with a similar idea, drawing all of the fiends plus Chaos and then giving each of them their own color-plus-figure design. We even swapped out the layouts, week to week, so that each fiend got their own time in the sun. Semis were Chaos, and Finals was the big group shot of all the monsters together. It was very striking, and a good layout for streaming since a lot of elements tend to get covered with all the screen. These designs, though, were easy to see through the layout, making them quite effective.

Duckling Rally 2024: Dirt Track Waddle GP

And here we actually see a new Duckling design already in the works. The Duckling Rally is a new, async event we launched this year, and to mark it we needed new art and layouts. While still keeping with the racing theme, I went with something more motocross instead of street racing for this event.

Of note, I didn't have a specific video game series in mind when making this layout. I just felt like for a rally race we needed a different kind of design, one that felt seperate from the Duck Derby since this was a different event. I'm generally happy with this layout, although I feel like next time I need to add more detail to the background to really make it sing.

FFR x FFMQR AP Crossover Tournament: Canoes, Canals, and All Your Pals!

Finally, we have our end of the year crossover tournament. This is our third year holding one, after crossovers with TimeSpinner and The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX Randomizer. Last year’s theme blended Legend of ZeldaCreated by Nintendo in 1986, the original Legend of Zelda game presented players with a open world to explore, packed with dungeons and monsters all ready to kill them at a moment's notice. The mix of adventure and action game play created a winning game and launched not only a successful series but an entirely new video game genre. and Final Fantasy elements, and this year we wanted to do something similar for our crossover with the Mystic Quest Randomizer community.

The design is a solid blending of the two. The central figure of Kraken, from Final Fantasy, is flanked by two mer creatures from Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. The background are mountains inspired by a background from Mystic Quest. The water takes inspiration from the opening title scroll of Final Fantasy. And a hero from each game stands in the foreground. Even the logos are blended, with the traditional Final Fantasy font both games use, Final Fantasy Randomizer’s version of the crystal, but five of them since there are five in Mystic Quest. Altogether it works really well and highlights both games as they get to party together.

And Then...

That’s it for this year’s designs, but as I did last year I’ll leave you with a taste of what’s planned for the following year. Winter Tournament 2025: The Great Chaos Caper.