Raye Pierre's Elusive Journal

ArtFight RPG Mindset

Hello everyone, I'm Pierre, Raye Pierre, and Today, I am simply gonna share my mindset when it comes to how I do attacks on Artfight and why I find it fun.

A reminder to all

Below are my opinions about ArtFight and how I engage with the game. There might be spoilers by mentioning characters from Homicipher, Final Fantasy, Omori, Monster Hunter, Disgaea, Super Mario, Genshin Impact, Kirby, and several other series so I suggest you look at the characters I recommended without regretting that you spoiled yourself.

Please listen to World End's Valentine from the OMORI OST on loop to enhance the reading experience!

[Contents]

What is ArtFight and why do I have this mindset?

To quote from the website,

"Art Fight is an annual art game that lasts for 1 month, beginning every July! Artists can register during or before the fight to join in."

To simplify its mechanics, the game functions by you attacking people by drawing them an art piece with respect to the artist's permissions and OC's(Original Character's) Design. They can have 'revenge' if you added some characters on your profile and they proceed to attack it. Defenses are what you call the pieces that other people drew with respect to your OCs. You gain points by attacking and you get more points if it falls under a certain category. For example, a full-body would give lots of points compared to a bust piece. The team with the highest points win and you have the option to change teams if you like.

Keep in mind; People in ArtFight do not throw knives at each other or actually attack each other. Attacks, Revenge, and Defenses are terms used to describe how your OCs are gonna be drawn and how you're going to draw other people's OCs.

I'd like to remind you that ArtFight is an art-gifting GAME. It would be a shame to not think of game-related themes and elements on a game. You're supposed to get creative and have fun with the game. Having this personal mindset really makes it fun for me as well as getting into the gaming vibe of this event. As a fellow [GAMER], I want to share this knowledge with people to share my perspective on ArtFight and hopefully for people to apply this knowledge into their experiences. Remember that this is optional and you are not required to imagine an RPG world and it's mechanics every time you play the game. You can think of another way to playing ArtFight and I'd be down to learn how one tackles ArtFight.

What is the RPG Mindset?

So, Raye, what is the RPG Mindset all about? It's simple; it follows the classic RPG Game Progression. RPG stands for Role-Playing Game. By assumption, you're role-playing to be part of a team and attack the opposition by drawing them to oblivion. Well, here comes the part that makes it fun for me to have this mindset. Imagine yourself in a scenario where you were invited into the world of ArtFight and all of your Pokemon, Personas, Summons, whatever you call entities to do your will; they are your OCs and they have to fight for you in this strange world. What's the best way to traverse the aggressive world of ArtFight other than meeting influential NPCs, fighting rivals, suffering from Super-Bosses, and having fun with the game with fun mechanics. It feels like this mindset ignores or enhances the competitive aspects of ArtFight as well. It could ignore the competition in way that you made your own competition that you are comfortable with but also challenges you at a reasonable level. It could enhance it cause it makes every attack more fun to compete against with. Each OC's vary in difficulty and you feel happy each time you overcome the difficulty as well as finishing a lineup that grants a lot of points. I personally ignore the competitive side of ArtFight and I'm happy with where I am. I am on ArtFight to cause the fun kind of chaos and bring joy to others and I.

RPG Mindset Logic and Mechanics

Each attack you do should be divided in sets and levels with categories separates each attacks into levels of varying difficulty.

Each Set contains a Role related to RPG stereotypes and each role represents something fun and different.

There is one RPG role that transcends all Levels and Sets and it makes sense to label them as is cause that would be the Super-Boss Role

Examples of using this mindset

I am going to make two examples. One about a theoretical way of how I to apply this mindset in the most organized way and the other is the way I "tried" applying it. My first ArtFight was really experimental and I didn't really have a proper way to making Sets and Levels. The theoretical way is a template of how people could possibly apply this mindset. I will show the progression map template for each ways and explain it afterwards.

Theoretical Way

For ArtFight, drawing OCs could be daunting at times. Why not draw something simple and Warm-Up before you deal with the challenges and the extremes. Once you progress, you get to the Easy Level; so far so good. You only wanna handle OCs with simple shapes and minimal details but it varies in shape to keep the process less mundane. The Mini-Boss for Easy Level helps with drawing the anatomy you want to focus on. I chose human cause peeps mostly go for human OCs therefore a Mini-Boss that is easy to draw with a figure of a human would be nice to get through. The Boss is a full-blown human and you have to hurdle through the challenge of having good anatomy. For Mr. Crawling, he was chosen because he has less colors and the only thing you have to worry about is the anatomy. Move on from that and you get to the Moderate Level. These OCs are chosen because they vary in colors and have little to moderate intricacies with designs. For the Mini-Boss of the Moderate Level, Hu Tao was chosen for an example. Hu Tao may seem simple but there are some intricacies you have to look out for and it's easy to falter if you don't pay attention. The Boss is Venti for he has more intricacies compared to the others but he's also not too hard. You may have noticed that these pieces are mostly human. My point stands that humans are the most common things to draw. This still serves a challenge while giving artists a sense of ease cause they are tackling what they're familiar with. After you're finished, you get to the Hard Level. This level is filled with OCs with a lot of intricacies and complexity with design. It could be the unfamiliar shape, the amount of detail, or the complex rendering technique. Mini-Boss takes your skills to the test if you can handle drawing more unfamiliar shapes and detail with Dodogama. Once you get past this, of course, you'd have to deal with Fatalis. It doesn't have a lot of color but it's still a daunting piece to draw. If you want suffering then you'd have to be aware of your Art Powers and how much you still have. Once you do Lore-Accurate, the experience might shift from fun but challenging to "oh dear god, why did I do this?" This set for this category is mostly filled with monsters of complex designs and shapes and they are all really difficult. If you don't wanna suffer then, of course, you can move on to the Final-Boss. Sephiroth is my favorite antagonist and I'm really biased to draw him and finish my Art-Fight with him. However, if this is all too easy for you then the DLC awaits. You have to draw the Super-Boss: Shara Ishvalda but it has to be as realistic as it could be. I don't know how to make it any more realistic other than researching more on animals and how I could apply that to its design. It's very experimental for sure. That feels like the most reasonable template I could give to people. You can change it or remove stuff to match with your preferences. You can have multiple bosses before you move on to the next Level or you can ignore the Moderate Level and immediately skip to the Hard Level. Feel free to go back a Level if you're struggling. Not all RPGs is fair and it's best to level up and recover at the easier Levels than suffering in the harder ones. A healthy artist is a happy artist and remember that well.

My Personal Experimental Way based on my Art Fight 2025 (Team Crystals)

My first ArtFight is one hell of a fight, I'd say. It's also the most chaotic applications of the mindset I invented. Compared to the Theoretical Way, this application is unpolished and unorganized. This is undeniably the first time I thought of this concept and I didn't go deep with the logistics of it at the time. What I felt throughout making these pieces makes sense with how I categorize them in different Levels and why I changed levels so much. Most of these attacks were random and unplanned and only started conceptualizing after I decided to attack them. You can also swap back to a lower difficulty to keep drawing but also taking it easy like what I did here. Since I was not confident enough for lore-accurate, I didn't do it. I would like to keep my mental state as fine and stable as possible without burning out. I warmed up with one of my friend's OCs, Dexter. Let's say I am quite shy in the first few attacks and attacked my friends to feel comfortable. Falzerin was my official attack outside of my friend groups and I'm proud of that. 8Ball was another friend of mine but I chose to attack his furry OC cause I wanna practice drawing Furries and I'm most likely to draw either Humans or Furries. I don't know what came over me to decide to fight a Super-Boss for my first year on ArtFight. However, It went surprisingly well and it goes to show how much I can underestimate myself. I cannot deny the fact that this was quite hell to try though. Drawing dragons was not my forte but I'm down to try things I'd love to learn and drawing dragons is one of them. I'm happy that I finished the piece of Kiwi and Kawo. I managed to gain some confidence and art experience with the whole process. I went back to draw to Void-Chan feel more comfortable and to give Zephy's OC love and more art. However, I wasn't expecting the piece for MemorySaga to be Hard. It was originally one character but once I asked for her lore. It legit felt incomplete so I had to recompose the piece while adding another OC outside of ArtFight just to feel complete. I also added the Saga Plushie in there as a bonus to make the bed less empty and a bit happier to balance out the melancholic piece. Once I felt satisfied, the rest of the attacks on Moderate Level felt just right. It's challenging enough for me to get creative but easy enough to know what I wanna do and apply it without trouble. Right up to the Bosses is where I felt the fatigue getting to me so I thought that I'd be finished after I did Pk Ninja's Piece. July was at the 20's mark and college began to weigh its heavy hand upon me. The boredom I got from college motivated me to continue with ArtFight. I did another piece for Easy Level where I made a Head-Shot Piece for Rio as a Warm-Up attack before I could do other pieces. Now that college is ongoing, ArtFight is close to ending, and some of the OCs I wanna do have some interesting amount of details. It's safe to say that I am at the proper Hard Level. I drew the last 4 pieces as the end of ArtFight approaches and it was intense. Phoenix was the most memorable piece I made on ArtFight. They had a video, a tutorial to be specific, about how to get into ArtFight. That's the reason why I chose them for my Final Boss of ArtFight 2025 and why It feels significant for me to end the event by drawing their OC. It's feels poetic that I'm about to fight one of the people who helped me get into ArtFight as my Final-Boss. It really fits for them to be a final boss too cause I only had a couple of hours to finish their piece and you need to pay attention to where the details go. I managed to finish and submit the piece TWELVE MINUTES BEFORE ARTFIGHT OFFICIALLY ENDED. As if I was running towards a closing door and I still managed to get inside by sliding on the floor before it completely closes up. I felt victorious; the attacks I did cause some significant amount of fun and chaos that makes me joyous. The win for Team Crystals was simply just icing on a cake.

Those were examples of how you could apply that mindset and I'd love to know if you tried it and see if you have a good time with it.

Suggestions

So you have the mindset of playing ArtFight like an RPG now. What are you gonna do about it? For me, I like to keep it simple where all of these Levels and Sets are just divisions of what I want to do and what I can do. This mindset is meant to be malleable to how you do Art like how Gamers prefers how to engage with the game they're playing. Not all Gamers are gonna appreciate getting beat up by multitude of enemies in Elden Ring but some people don't mind that. Some players find cozy games too boring if the game has no conflict to motivate you and others doesn't need a conflict just to have fun with their game. These suggestions are cool ideas I have that I could probably apply on my pieces.

Role-Playing as your "Job" with respect to the theme is simple. Do you know those classes that you choose for characters in RPG Games. Those classes could be Knight, Warrior, Fighter, Magician, Mage, Monk, Cleric, Rogue, and all the Common classes peeps know. If you have a character but you want to spice up their design, why not turn them into a magician, a monk, or something cool? Not only that, we can get on with the themes as well. The Teams for ArtFight 2026 are Comedy, Tragedy, and Mystery. You can create Reference Sheets of your OC but wearing clothes and matching roles related to an RPG game. You can do a classic Bard Comedian, Tragic Knight, or Mysterious Eldritch Overlord. However, you can also make it less on the fantasy aspect. Take for example, Stand-Up Comedian, Tragic Theater Kid, and Mysterious FBI Agent. You can come up with so many combinations that could related both to the RPG mindset and the theme of ArtFight.

Giving them Roles related to the current theme requires a bit of research but it is fun to learn more about your theme. Tell me, what is Comedy, Tragedy, and Mystery all about? It's theater-core! You can attack people (this only applies if outfits can be changed) and give them certain outfits with respect to the OC's lore and the theme. For example, the OC you choose looks like they'd look great in Comedy. If you have background knowledge about the story of A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare and it could go well with the OC's lore. Go ahead and draw that OC with references to Midsummer Night's Dream. Another Example is simply you putting someone on a stage and they reference something related to theater like saying "Woe is Me," as if playing a character on stage. What's fun with using the RPG Mindset is that you can think of so many diverse references and costume ideas that you want to draw on someone. The RPG Mindset comes in handy with organizing these will remind yourself that ArtFight is quite a silly game.

First time joining the fight? I have some tips!

Remember ArtFight is a Game. You're supposed to have fun with it. Never feel pressured nor be aggressive at it. You join any time. It's up to you in the end if you want to try to play the game or not. Making the game easy or hard is just up to you as well. I make it a bit challenging for myself cause I want to try out the hard stuff and improve myself with the process. You can choose to not do that either.

Read the Rules. They always update the rules and it's best to know what is allowed and avoid trouble.

Respect Artists Permissions. If you wanna do a piece, always follow the permissions. It's the artist's personal set of rules when you're drawing their OCs. You should also set your Permissions to avoid any miscommunication or unwanted parts on the art being given to you.

Don't Rush. It's an art-gifting game, not a racing game. Don't feel pressured to rush your pieces mainly cause it will suck your art powers dry and it won't be fun to play the game. If you have a piece you couldn't do then that's okay. There's always a next year; and besides, can't you just draw it later on and post the piece on your socials after ArtFight? You can still share your stuff after Artfight if the artist is fine with it. (Just check which website they're comfy with. I don't repost my OCs specifically on Twitter. If I don't want them on Twitter then it's best to see what the artist is okay with it.

You're not Obligated to Compete. This is a team effort and the combined efforts of many. You don't need to dedicate yourself on drawing multiple full-bodies at max render quality for a ton of points to support your team. You should only draw when you feel good about drawing other People's OC. Know that the whole competitive side of ArtFight is optional.

Plan a bit. You still gotta come up with how you're going to draw the piece and who you're going to target. It's best to plan before you attack and it's better if you plan before the event starts.

Draw friends then strangers. Wanna be comfy with doing ArtFight? Fight some friends who are planning on participating! I believe it's better to attack strangers or artists outside of your influence or friend group cause the event is about connecting with artists you're not familiar with and fighting new ones means seeing more art you haven't seen before. Besides, you can draw your friend's OCs anytime but a person who never has never interacted with you but you like their art and you might not interact with them anymore cause they don't have socials. Give them something nice for this event or the next time if you're able.

Remember that you should enjoy yourself during all of this. What's the point of the game if you can't have fun?

Happy ArtFight and wish you luck. I'm going to continue my onslaught on artists personally. I wanna attack more, improve, and devour a lot of art powers to grow powerful. I am driven to put OCs in fun yet strange situations like a Biblically Accurate Worm Plushifying other OCs of the artist I chose to attack. That is all for today and I hope see y'all in another time.

With love, Raye