Today we bring you something different and exciting - our first community interview!
Nya Nya is a name that needs no introduction in the glamour community. From the beloved glamour submissions on the website, to the feedback and even glamour live streams on discord, we've all been blessed by her spectacular eyebrows, one way or another. And yet, we all want to know more about her and her glamour methods.
So read on Eorzea Collection's exclusive interview with Nya!
Hello, Nya!
To start us off, can you tell us more about yourself?
Hello everyone!
I'm Nya Nya from Faerie. I'm a 27 year-old freelance allround designer from the Netherlands. I've lived here the majority of my life. I spent about 5 years living in England to get both my BA and MA in interaction design and international business and design. Sadly, I had to return home as they had some issues with Europe. Not sure what that was all about.
My interests are honestly not that exciting. I like playing video games and driving around as I recently got my license! Yeah, I know, I started late. There's no way in hell I was going to learn how to drive in England. They drive on the wrong side of the road, man! I also love watching movies. Pretty much any genre except horror. I’m a weenie.
Also, thanks to my mother who started to do photography of her own, I slowly got into nature photography myself. She ended up giving me her old camera when she bought a new one, which then ended up going all over the place with me.
I hope that I introduced myself plenty with that.
How long have you been playing FFXIV and what drew you to it?
If I'm going to be honest, absolutely nothing drew me in to play the game. A very close friend of mine had been playing the game for a while and invited myself and another friend to join her.
I had never actually enjoyed Final Fantasy games that much and I'm incredibly impatient by nature, so A Realm Reborn was definitely not for me. I would mostly joke around while being online, I was there to hang out really.
I think it was when I unlocked Astrologian that I said "Yeah, this is fun" and got hooked. I'd say that this was around October 2017? So getting close to three years now.
What is your favourite thing about FFXIV?
I'm an absolute geek for usability design. A majority of my college time was dedicated to it. When I was told that you could play multiple classes on a single character I was incredibly impressed.
My first and pretty much only MMO before this was Maplestory. They kept releasing new classes in the game and every time you'd have to make a new character for it. This wouldn't be so bad if the game's design worked around it a bit better. For example, the friends list was character bound, which is a pain when there's nearly 40 jobs to play.
Having all my classes in one place on FFXIV is absolutely wonderful.
Were you always as invested in glamour or did that interest develop over time?
That definitely developed over time. When I first started uploading I was definitely more invested in the main parts of the game than with everything else I could do. Even when Shadowbringers came out, I was more focused on getting all my classes to level 80 than I was on making new glamours with all the new gear we got. Though now that I do have everything at 80, I have plenty of time to do more glamours.
What about in your everyday life, are you as fashion-conscious?
I'm too poor to be fashion-conscious, so I do it in a video game.
How did you first find out about Eorzea Collection?
I can't for the life of me remember. A friend probably showed me. I was aware of the Eorzea Collection for a while before I genuinely got into it. What I do really clearly remember is the moment that I started actively uploading to the website.
It's really silly and I don't know what made me adamant about proving this person wrong, but I ran into a tweet by someone while browsing the Eorzea Collection search prompt on Twitter. They said something amongst the lines of "There are no good Lalafel glamours on the Eorzea Collection, they're all the same."
As I read that I felt like I needed to prove this person wrong. Actually, maybe it was more among the lines of me wanting to make better glamours for Lalafel because this person felt there weren't any good ones? But the moment I read that, I decided to really take part in the Eorzea Collection.
What do you love the most about Eorzea Collection?
I used to frequent a forum that was completely created from scratch. The developer behind it was incredibly skilled. He was sadly not open to criticism or suggestions. I remember him taking one of my suggestions for the website, coding it in such a way that it wouldn't work and then telling me "Told you it wouldn't work." It was disheartening to say the least.
What I love about the Eorzea Collection is how incredibly involved and patient Edeon is with us. He takes so many of our suggestions and actually brings them to life. Even when I'm suggesting really stupid nitpicky design related things, he responds kindly. I can't believe he's not tired of me yet.
Can you walk us through your process of creating a glamour?
The process itself is really nothing special. I find one particular item that I like and I work around it. I always feel like the key to making a good glamour is making sure all the items match in a specific way. A good glamour is a glamour that looks like it was meant to be a set to begin with.
Now for specific rules? I definitely have those set up. The most important part is matching the detailing of separate pieces.
1. Make sure your metal trimmings match:
There are so many different shades of gold and silver. I always make sure they're correctly matched up.
I check their tones primarily. Is it a warm toned or a cool toned silver? Is it brass or pure gold?
Always make sure your trimmings match or are similarly repeated in your glamour.
This doesn't mean you can never combine them of course, but make sure they compliment each other correctly.
An example would be this glamour.
From the bottom it's silver but gradually turns into gold accents.
2. Match accents:
Just like your trimmings, you should look at the detailing of different pieces. I'll use
this glamour as an example.
The first and fourth image will show you best, but look at the little detailing. The boots have silver chains with a blue gem in it.
The top has silver chains and blue gems in it. The gloves and earrings have blue gems. Because I'm repeating those minor details, the entire glamour is brought together.
This can be done with anything truly. Combining trimmings, colours, small details. Anything. Another somewhat different example would be this glamour. The dark blue and teal are repeated subtly throughout the glamour. The teal comes back in the hands while the shoes bring back the dark blue colour. The pinks come back in the book and the flower.
3. Check styles, textures and overall item quality:
Something I notice a lot of the time is that some items are overall lower quality than other items. Perhaps it's the textures or maybe just their age, some items just look better than others. I think the best example to this would be the Thavnairian Tights. I feel like they're not as refined as a lot of newer items we have, despite in concept being perfect for so many glamours.
Do you have a go-to glamour or gear piece?
Would you believe it if I told you that I don't actually ever have a completed glamour on my character? I work on so many glamours at a time, I've never got a proper set put together. I've always got remnants of the previous glamour on top of another glamour because I'm too lazy to ever put myself together properly.
I think the glamour I've used the longest would be this. However, when I swapped from Lalafel to Viera, I stopped having one set glamour for my character. Right now, my most used glamour would probably be this.
What about a favourite in-game colour?
Easy! Dragoon Blue. Gotta appreciate that it's literally the blue screen of death.
We know glamour is the true endgame, but is it your main focus in the game or do you mix it up with other activities as well?
I actually recently made a static! I've only ever pugged savage before, but this tier definitely proved to be a bit of a challenge with party finder. Together with a few friends, I put together a static. We met two very lovely people through the recruitment Discord and we've been having a blast ever since we started. I’m really glad we had such a good click with each other and despite our issues with Light Rampant, I’m excited to raid with them.
Other than raiding and of course glamming, I like to decorate houses. I’m not all that good at it or anything. There are some people who put together some incredible creations that I could never think of. But if anyone's curious, feel free to come visit my houses (Mist 19-45 and 44 @ Faerie)!
If you could wish for one thing in FFXIV, what would it be?
More glamour chest slots. I have at least 300 items in a retainer at the moment.
What about Eorzea Collection, what would it be?
So many of the things I could wish for are already being implemented. The only thing I can imagine would be the EC magazine I've nagged about, but honestly at this point I don't think that would be a good fit for the website anymore.
With the addition of the content tab, I feel like there's a lot of potential for community-driven content, guides and glamour showcasing that would have been covered in a magazine. It's probably ideal like this. I'd much rather browse a website for its content than download a full magazine that could only come out periodically.
If there's anything to wish for here, it would be to see the written content grow and maybe eventually for more people to be able to contribute to it.
Thank you so much for your time, Nya!
Do you have any closing remarks?
Feel free to say hello in game if you spot me! Or in Discord if you spot me in the voice channels.
If you want to see some good glamours, I'd recommend having a look at Xennon Song's and Nicky Tilmit's glamours here on Eorzea Collection.
Thank you all for stopping by to read this interview!
