Three weeks ago to the day I posted some blog art depicting my SWTOR toon in his “newb gear”. I had just begun playing the game and wanted to visually mark my characters growth through some art of my own. I regret not doing this for my World of Warcraft toons as I played those as well because I have a lot of fond memories from my days of playing that game.

At any rate, today is a follow up post of my Star Wars character, now at level 25. In the game your character acquires their own ship somewhere around level 17 and then at 25 they will get their first riding vehicle (thanks goodness because I’m tired of running).

The look of my character has also changed a lot since level 10. He’s got some pretty slick gear and he is a lot more durable, which comes in handy since I like to tank and get beat on A LOT! Even though my drawings don’t replicate exactly what my in-game character looks like, it’s still pretty close and really fun to draw. I’ll probably add at least two more drawings to the list before I’m done. I’ll add one when he reaches level 50 – which is as high a level as you can achieve – and then another when I get some really sweet looking raid gear. Until then enjoy and thanks!

For those of you who may not know it yet, this year my fiancee (@khurlebusch) and I will be married. Most of the expenses are being taken care of by her parents with my parents taking care of the honeymoon expenses. Having stated this, though, there are still expenses that need to be paid for little things that you just don’t think about until you are planning a wedding. Couple all of this with the fact that I have taken a leave, as it were, from freelancing this year and you have a couple that was stretched pretty thin, monetarily, this Valentine week.

Of course I couldn’t let my Valentine go empty handed, even if the money was tight, so I set out to create a “handmade” gift this year. My fiancee has been wanting me to draw her real life pet dog as a cartoon ever since we started dating two years ago. I really have been meaning to get to it, but things just have been so busy in the past couple of years I haven’t done it, until Tuesday.

For Valentine’s Day I bought my fiancee a nice bouquet of flowers and created a Valentine’s Day card with a cartoon drawing of her dog on the inside. She loved it, in fact she said it was the perfect thing I could have done. On a side note, we also ate heart shaped pizza and watched Breaking Dawn and it was one of the best Valentine’s Days we’ve had so far, in my opinion.

So it just goes to show you that, as an artist, sometimes being broke at the right time can create the perfect moment to deliver that gift from the heart that each of you will cherish for a lifetime. Stay creative my friends