The Hero Portrait Studio was originally established in 2005 by my brother, artist Uziel Twentyone, as a “side gig” while he worked hard full-time in the mortgage lending business. He has been “into” comics, mythology, and science fiction all his life. But his real passion is art. The HPS seemed to be the perfect fit for him. However, in 2007 he underwent several major professional and personal setbacks, and was forced to abandon his beloved “studio project.” He ultimately relocated from Los Angeles to Florida’s Gulf Coast, where I live!
I have been dying to start a family business for a very long time. Both my older brothers are professional comics/fantasy illustrators, and my husband is a walking fantasy lore encyclopedia. I’m a great organizer, and our baby brother, who just got his degree in computer electronic engineering, is something of a savant when it comes to the web. And we’re ALL avid gamers. We can even get Mom to dabble in Guitar Hero once in a while! It was my idea - I’m bragging now - to resurrect the HPS as a family venture. And after lots and lots of work, the idea is reality: we’re finally here!
So, what’s the inspiration behind the site? Well, it’s different for each of us. But the driving factor seems to be our universal love of good storytelling, and a passion for illustration and visual art. And for us, nothing delivers like gaming. A serious gamer will invest herself (or himself) into the story, and a great game can leave the gamer transformed. MMOs hold another dimension entirely: they allow and encourage - as my brother likes to say - gamers to share their own mythologies until the game itself is left transformed.
Unfortunately, pen and paper RPG’s leave a lot to the gamer’s imagination when building and running a carefully made character; platformers leave almost no room for customization; and MMOs are limited to the neccessary limits of the game engine. That’s where we come in. We want you to see your character in ways you’ve only been able to imagine previously. You want your superhero lifting a bus, but there’s no such action in the game? We can help. You want to see your Blood Elf’s mischievous smirk, but are stopped by in-game facial presets? We can help. You want to finally see the character that’s only ever existed for you on RPG character sheets? We can do that, too.

The mission of our little endaevor is to help every gamer taste immortality... to show them through art what creating something that will live forever really feels like.

Take it from me: it feels GREAT!

-Aynjel