This is a fan art picture of the game Muramasa the Demon Blade for the Wii ([link]). It was made by Vanillaware, the studio that made Odin Sphere for the PS2. Muramasa's a beautiful game. I did this for a fan art contest that was going on at their official site.

The two characters sitting at the bar with bowls of udon are the two main characters. In the game, you can stop by restaurants and order food to refill hp and gain spirit (a kind of "currency"). At the top of the picture you might notice three diamonds, one with a soup spoon, one with a tea cup, and one with a name and a bar; this is how your swords are displayed in-game. You have three swords equiped and you can scroll through the three to the one you want to actively use. The text displayed over the diamond is the special move of that particular weapon and the bar underneath the name is the weapons endurance. I chose to put ninjas in the background because I think it'd be fun since they're basically the "random thugs" of the game. Many many ninjas will die on your way to the end of the game. lol

I think it's funny that as I was drawing the emotes on the characters, I started asking myself "What is this? RO? >.>" It's like drawing Ragnarok Online emotes gets ingrained in you for playing/drawing RO for so long. @_@

This is probably the most effort I've ever put into drawing a background on a picture and I'm happy to say that I think it turned out pretty nicely and am surprised I actually had fun with it. XD I remember before that I used to be (and many other artists I know >.>) really reluctant to do backgrounds because they never really seemed any fun, but as I've become more experienced at doing art straight onto the computer and being exposed to working with colors, I think I've actually grown to kinda enjoy it. ^^ It was really fun trying to get the "outside-glow" to be coming in through the window and door. XD