Lucids: Subcon Guild Hall

I do like Pokemon quite a bit, but I really should be making and showing off more of my own ideas as drawings.  This week, I decided to make this picture for two reasons: 1.) to draw more having to do with my Lucids idea, and 2.) to set up some ideas for future projects.  I figured a good way to accomplish this was by drawing a place where many Lucids could meet.

Ken brings Sakura on a tour of Subcon Academy before she signs on as a member of the Dream Police.  As part of their stop, they reach the "guild hall", a tavern area where Lucids working for Subcon Academy eat, drink, and chat with each other.  They also post various jobs on the walls that the Lucids can perform, from general assistance to Nightmare hunts to orders to capture Dream Pirates (Lucids that try to steal people's thoughts).  It is essentially the social hub of Subcon Academy.

I modeled this room after a small part of a pub in Waltham I visit sometimes: The Skellig.  Every month, game developers from all over Massachusetts go to this pub for an event called "Boston Post Mortem".  Somebody in the game industry will give a talk about a game they worked on recently, and developers will attend to listen to the talk.  More importantly (to me), these meetings provide an opportunity to personally meet people, and some of those people may be offering work.  That is why I try to attend these meetings each month, and honestly, that brief journey does invoke the sense I wanted to capture here.

A lot of fantasy settings tend to have a place like this in them: a place for warriors to drink, socialize, and perhaps find work.  Just look at games like Final Fantasy Tactics or Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers, or fantasy cartoons like Fairy Tail for examples.  A place like this provides a golden opportunity for people of different backgrounds in the same world to come together for good or for ill, creating new opportunities.  That kind of place just reeks of the start of an adventure, and that is the sense I get visiting the Skellig month after month, even if I have not had much luck actually claiming work in the game industry.

Now, while I had the Skellig in mind when designing this place, it is not an exact replica.  There are usually more seats along the back wall.  Instead, I used that space here to add some job boards, to give an idea of what Lucids might do.  The colors are also much different than the actual pub.  Seeing as this guild hall was part of a school for Dream Police, I wanted it to seem a bit cleaner / cheerier than the usual fantasy pub, hence the whitish walls and metallic boards.  I also tried to apply a mainly blue-and-gold color scheme to this place, mainly out of pride for Boston (and Massachusetts in general).  I figured that would be a nice-looking color combination to signify Subcon Academy in general.

Finally, we have the people in here.  In the foreground, we have Ken showing Sakura around.  But who are all these other faces?  Honestly, I am not entirely sure yet.  I wanted to fill this room with other Lucids, as well as jobs that show other things.  Some of them are ideas I had already that I just wanted to put up, while others are things I came up with to fill space.  Like I said, though, with all of this here, I might be able to pull ideas from this picture and develop them into new characters or settings.  Yes, even the dinosaur might be something I can use.

Phew!  This one actually took me a long time to make, especially the setting.  I am more used to drawing characters than backgrounds, but I really hope you guys like this one.