Wizard101 Pet Idea: Celestial Jellyfish


The Celestial Jellyfish

Celestia has all sorts of underwater creatures, including a jellyfish pet which originates there. However, this jellyfish is different - it's got a different design and is more of an elegant creature than a whimsical one. It has translucent body parts, with tentacles made up of Celestian hieroglyphs. Its mystery and majesty is very much in-line with Celestia and its background, as well as its current location under the sea.

Building the Jellyfish

This was designed in Adobe Illustrator, meaning it's a vector image - that's a fancy term that means instead of filling each individual pixel with color, it works on lines and curves, so you can scale it from the size of a pin to the size of a building with no quality loss. Of course, the image your see here is only a raster version.

Designing in vector means your have some limitations and challenges, though. It means you can't use things like drop shadows, or Photoshop brushes. Everything has to be vector. That said, all parts of the jellyfish were designed using no pre-existing elements. The only things in that first image that I didn't create were the Wizard101 logo and the Celestia overlay for the background. Every vector brush and every shape was created for that image specifically.

The glows are done using a blend tool that takes two objects and makes a transition between them. It doesn't work with incredibly complex shapes, but it's a handy tool. To give you an idea, I took a few shapes and blended them together. These are a few different blends from a red square to a yellow circle to a blue hexagon.

What I do for glows is blend an entirely transparent object with a colored one, so it's actually steps of different colors, but it looks like a glow for afar.

The final obstacle was the Celestian hieroglyphs. I can't use any images.So what I did is take images of the letters on their own, trace them all using Illustrator, then combine them and create my own art brush. So now I can draw lines however I like, and they'll have these symbols on the line.

A History Quest, Of Course!

How would you obtain such a pet? The same way I'd want to obtain anything - through a quest I enjoy. And while all quests are great, none are so fun as the history quests. Ever since Zafaria, Wizard started doing a lot of great ones, and I've got guides on most throughout my blog. They always contain interesting stories about the history of the Spiral.

I would like to learn more about Celestia's current environment. It's obviously being overtaken by sharks, crabs, and all sorts of undersea beats, but how did they initially respond when their own environment was taken by the Celestians? I would think that some history not just of Celestia, but of its current location, would be intriguing and also relevant to this pet.

As always, thanks for reading and see you in the Spiral! Note: One or more images in this post is edited. Some items shown are added and not available in-game.


  1. Don't we already have a jellyfish pet that is sorta the same but more cartoony?

    1. Right, we have one with a whimsical feel to it, much like all of Celestia, which was KingsIsle's goal after how dark Dragonspyre was. However, Celestia is one of the more lore-oriented worlds of the Spiral, and I feel like it has a lot left to offer - hence this jellyfish, a more majestic and mysterious alternative to the existing one.

  2. You never cease to amaze me Jason. Your artwork is second to none and I always know I can read something new and interesting here. I love how you went in to detail explaining everything and show'd how you made the glow. It was really neat! I had never seen stuff like this before and I really like what you did.

    Keep it up man!

  3. This is a truly amazing concept. I really think, based off of this, they should have "Lore Pets". Pets that you obtain from learning more about the history of each world. Questions, such as, "What kind of magic did Bartleby and Mother Raven use to create the Spiral? Was it Shadow magic, or Balance? Besides, how would Bartleby advise Ambrose how dangerous Shadow magic is? Why did he make it?" These are intresting questions to answer in a little quest. Besides, how cool would it be to have a baby Bartleby floating on an island around you?!? I certainly would freak out!

    ~Corwin Caller, Balance Extrodinare

