Personal / community project / Modding / portrait art
Entry types: play, explore. Main type: play.
Portraits of the Rim
My favourite mod for one of my favourite games. One missing helmet, one very nervous email, and somehow I got to join Twopenny’s hand-drawn little corner of the Rim.
- When
- 2024 – ongoing
- My part
- Contributing illustrator · Meysmerized
- With
- TwoPennyDoodleMod creator & lead artist.
- TaranchukC# code.
- BunbunbunniesContinued code support.
- Context
- TwoPennyDoodle’s RimWorld mod · a hobby collaboration
01 / Before the first drawing
3,000+ hours.
Portraits of the Rim has been my favourite mod for one of my favourite games: RimWorld. 3,000+ hours, not to brag… I am absolutely bragging.
Twopenny’s portraits give all those little colonists faces that change as they age, get hurt, change their hair or put on something new. All that personality, is exactly what this story generator needed. Of course I fell in love with it.
Steam gallery · Portraits of the Rim / TwoPennyDoodle.
3,419.3 hours and counting. My Steam receipt 26-11-04. RimWorld / Ludeon Studios.
02 / March 2024
It started with a helmet.
One day, I noticed a samurai helmet was missing its portrait art. So I spent an entire weekend carefully studying and copying Twopenny’s style, trying to make that one piece feel like it belonged. A gift for someone whose work had brought me a ridiculous amount of joy.
The samurai helmet that started it all. My original drawing, March 2024.
03 / After that weekend
Send email. Panic a little.
I sent her the email, anxiously expecting... no reply. Or worse: what if she took the gift as an insult? My mind can go south real fast.
What came back was a thank-you… and an offer of “partnership.” Excuse me?? Twopenny was nice enough to let me into her project, and she is probably one of the sweetest souls on earth. Drawing little things for POTR has been on my hobby list ever since.
04 / Rimsenal - Hair pack · added 9 August 2024
A whole lot of hair
Rimsenal - Hair pack, by 삼치구이/CeroForGrill, was my first complete pack. So many hairstyles, drawn bit by bit between everything else.
My portraits made their way into POTR on August 9, 2024. Seeing my drawings become part of my favourite mod? That still makes me happy.
My Rimsenal hair studies, March 2024. Portrait base by TwoPennyDoodle; original hairstyles from Rimsenal - Hair pack by 삼치구이/CeroForGrill.
05 / 2025–2026 · added 7 September 2026
Rim & fashion
A year-ish later came FashionRIMsta. Except spoon (witchyspoon), its original creator, retired while I was still making the portrait assets.
Thankfully, Mlie picked up the original mod, so I could keep going. Thank you, Mlie. <3
Hats, masks, clothes… more little pieces for my little colonists. The FashionRIMsta portraits joined POTR on September 7, 2026.
My portrait drawing. Original mod: witchyspoon & Nackblad; continued by Mlie.
06 / Big and Small · in progress
No step on snek.
Someone asked for Lamias in comments of POTR’s Steam Workshop page. I went: oh cool, I’ll draw some sneaky sneks, I’m down. Then I realised they came from RedMattis’s Big and Small mods. Which have A SHIIIET TON of assets to find & drawn. @u@ Oh my gawd.
So now I’m working my way through the whole Big and Small adventure. Expect that one in about a year… or two. Ahahah. An estimate with a very generous amount of wiggle room.
Looking back
My little hand-drawn haven.
POTR is, first and foremost, artisanal. People draw this art. By hand. That’s why it takes so long, and that’s a big part of why I love it. It’s become my last little haven of hand-drawn illustration for the sheer relaxation of it.
I’m still obsessed with magical robots. I’ve been feeding them my dreams for the past five-plus years, and I don’t see that stopping. But here, I get to settle in and human-draw for a change, like in the good old days, adding tiny pieces of me in a game I love, with someone I’m very glad I nervously emailed.
Credits
People & contributions
- TwoPennyDoodlePortraits of the Rim is her mod. Its creation, art direction, original portraits and splash artwork are hers. I’m lucky she welcomed me into her project.
- Meysmerized (me!)The first samurai helmet, plus portrait assets for Rimsenal - Hair pack and FashionRIMsta. My Big and Small drawings are still in progress.
- TaranchukPOTR’s C# code.
- BunbunbunniesContinued code support for POTR.
- 삼치구이/CeroForGrillRimsenal - Hair pack, the original hairstyle mod.
- witchyspoon (spoon)FashionRIMsta’s original creator; textures and code.
- NackbladTextures for the original FashionRIMsta.
- MlieFashionRIMsta (Continued). Thank you for keeping it going. <3
- RedMattisBig and Small, including Lamias and other Snake-People.
- PhaneronGorgon snake hair and several icons in Big and Small - Lamias and other Snake-People.
- MothimisticThe “Gender Punk” pin in POTR’s splash artwork.
- ErinPOTR’s mod-page art base, advice and support.
- Oskar PotockiSupport, advice and coordination with Taranchuk for POTR.
- bolphenAdvice and insight on gradient hair for POTR.
- Laurence042 · UnfortunateДругPOTR translations: Chinese and Russian, respectively.
- MasterWu · quxOriginal FashionRIMsta translations: Simplified Chinese and French, respectively.
- Tynan Sylvester / Ludeon StudiosRimWorld, the game behind all of this.
As it happens
Project journal.
Notes, progress, and little things along the way.
2026
playexplore Less asset hunting. More drawing.
A button to check my enabled mods, show which portrait pieces are missing, and give me the south-facing in-game image for reference. Wouldn't that be nice?
For Portraits of the Rim, the Big and Small update sent me down a rabbit hole deep enough that I needed help keeping track. So I built a little set of tools, missing-asset finder and checklist keeper, with the help of robot-teacher & friendly-helper ChatGPT.
Double-click, get an accurate report. Runs offline, no LLM required. A connected file isn't necessarily finished art, and a report can't replace looking in-game. But boy, does it help—and oh my, there's still so much to draw!
Less folder hunting, more time drawing for Twopenny’s Portraits of the Rim . A little ''automated'' digital organization for my otherwise ''artisanal'' digital hobby.
A scan of my enabled mods. Still one thing to check.
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