Even though Red Dead Online is nearly three years old, its dedicated community continues to flex its creativity by producing fan art. While a majority is based on the memorable moments featured in Red Dead Redemption 2's solo story mode, one artist decided to create something wholly unique.
Proving to be one of the core features that has defined the cowboy shooter is the character creation tool. It steadily became a popular outlet for the most artistic fans to push the feature to its absolute limit to carve out their very own distinctive outlaw. With such a powerful tool in the hands of gamers, artists have been able to create some stunning unique artwork inspired by what they had created in-game.
Paying tribute to the game's promotional art style, artist Ketto Art has turned their custom character into an astonishing visual masterpiece. The detail and bold use of color are just some of the many things that make this such an incredible tribute to Red Dead Online, along with clear attention to depicting the harsh brutality and staggering wilderness present during the American frontier.
In the render, a decorated desperado is fixed with the carbine repeater as well as an intricate gun belt loaded with shining accessories. The outlaw takes a defensive stance; their arms tucked in, legs apart, rifle ready and finger on the trigger before a harsh crimson mountainside backdrop. It would be safe to assume she is a bounty hunter, as made evident to the role's accolade-tacked belt, and is on the hunt somewhere in the Grizzlies West region of Ambarino territory. Although juxtaposing the serious themes, the artist stated that they made sure to sneak a funny parody of the game's notorious hovering accessories into the piece, which can be seen when observing the left side of the gun belt.
Impressively, Ketto Art confirmed that they only had a couple of posters plus one in-game screenshot of their custom character as a reference when creating this piece. Even more spectacular is that this piece of fan art was created over just the span of a few days and was completely hand-drawn in the free open source painting program, Krita.
Overall, the artist's devotion to detail when making this fan art is a pure reflection of how much they love the Red Dead Redemption series, whilst also paying homage to the magnificent world so many players fell in love with during their time with the series. From the visual style to the hilarious bugs and glitches, this has it all.
Red Dead Online is available right now for PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One.