Laughter of Dragons

I completely missed the fact The One Ring: Laughter of Dragons was out already!
I did a LOT of art for it, and here it is:

© 2019 Sophisticated Games and Cubicle 7 Entertainment Middle-earth, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the characters, items, events and places therein are trademarks or registered trademarks of The Saul Zaentz Company d/b/a Middle-earth Enterprises and are used under license by Sophisticated Games Ltd and their respective licensees.

Six Ages Blog 01 - Creating Scene Art

This is the first of a couple posts about the game we've been making in the past few years, which is going to be released on the 28th of June 2018. You can preorder it here: 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/six-ages-ride-like-the-wind/id934012726?mt=8

Each event in "Six Ages", like in "King of Dragon Pass", is accompanied by a handpainted illustration.

This post will take you through the steps necessary to get to that illustration.

The Style

Going into "Six Ages" and out again, trying to paint for other clients were both interesting transitions. 

There were a few general guidelines for the scene art:

- in most of them the "camera" is positioned at human height level, so it feels like we're looking through the eyes of someone in the scene. Tilted camera angles are reserved for the "weird" situations where something is wrong, or magical.

- we're in the Storm Age, a mythical time. So colours are sometimes more vibrant, things might feel a bit "more" than purely realistic.

- for the sake of clarity, both visual and that of storytelling, local colour of some objects was emphasized. (things like clan symbols, specific embroidery and so on, so it's immediately recognizable who's who)

Because the game is also going to be released on mobile phones, every scene's composition had to work on multiple levels.

- the scene needs to work as is, with no dead space and clear storytelling. As balanced a composition as possible.

- the scene also needs to be recognizable and the storytelling has to work with one half of it covered up. (because the phone version displays text over roughly 40% of the screen) This was an interesting challenge and I feel we mostly did quite well.

Other than that, the style we went for was derived from the one in KoDP, moving slightly towards "belgian graphic novels". (the technique is still ink + watercolor)

The Process

The majority of scenes went through 4 stages, each one with possible revisions.

Thumbnail -> Pencil drawing -> Ink drawing -> Colouring

An unofficial fifth step was mostly up to me - postprocessing.

1. Thumbnail

Every scene begins with a text description like this: 

"S359. Description: our warriors come to us to make a demand.
text: <w>, who serves on your clan council, has been stirring your elite warriors up against the <otherClan> clan. Calmer sorts point out that the <otherClan.plural> are already on the brink of a declaring a feud against you. When they point this out, <w> and <his/her> fellow hotbloods say this is exactly why they need to be brought to heel."

Towards the end of development I could continue without a thumbnail, because the example scene I'm going to show was fairly standard.
Here's a thumbnail of another scene:

As you can see, they're very quick drawings to establish where characters are, some basic body language, but which can be quickly rearranged and redrawn if necessary.

2. Pencil Sketch

I knew for this scene I wanted two characters in the front, making demands of our clan elders. Since the complaining warrior can be either male or female, there is one of each.

(as you can see, I placed a vertical line through the centre, to remind myself of the one-half composition guideline)

Now that I was happy with these two, it was time to move further back.

I'm planning a further blog post about inspirations for the Hyaloring culture, and I'll talk more about the clan hall there.

This sketch got some feedback and it wasn't immediately clear what the action to the left meant. I wanted to show that some of the warriors were getting physical with our elders, trying to convince them of something.

David felt that was too much and so we went with a revised figure (below). That way this art is applicable to several different scenes/events and thus more efficient.

At this point I also got feedback on the costuming, the woman to the left's skirt was a bit short. With that in mind, I moved onto the next step - inking.

3. Ink drawing

In some scenes I chose to ink only the foreground and keep the background in pencil (but neater and more detailed), because that allows it to visually recede. Thick ink lines push themselves to the foreground. 

I think inking is my favourite stage, it's just so relaxing. There's still a lot to figure out, but I can relax the more constructive part of my brain and just get into the zone.

The image is already there, I just need to "carve" it out.

4. Colouring

I use a Russian brand of watercolours called "St. Petersburg White Nights", in case you wanted to know. There's honey in them, apparently. (I did not try eating them! :))

I didn't take any in-progress photos, unfortunately. My setup looks like this though:

Notice the very much professional lighting system? (I would only assemble that for long nights of colouring. It was actually quite useful, since it could be taken apart quickly and I didn't have to buy a tall standing lamp.)

Here's the coloured scene "raw" from the scanner:

Some of the feedback was fairly typical - the clan insignia wasn't very clear on the foreground figures. So for clarity I changed the hue of some parts slightly, so that the double red line of embroidery stood out more.

The final scene art after post-processing looked like this: 

And that's it. 

edit: Here's a timelapse: 

Next time I'll write a bit about our research and some of the real world inspirations for our protagonists - the Hyalorings.

"Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind" is up for preorders!

A game I've been working on for the past 4 years, a spiritual successor to the awesome "King of Dragon Pass", will be released on iOS devices on 28th of June 2018!

You can preorder the game now:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/six-ages-ride-like-the-wind/id934012726?mt=8   

Life between myths. Clans, cows, choices.The spiritual successor to King of Dragon Pass, Six Ages combines interactive stories and turn-based strategy. Your small clan’s survival depends on its relations with the warring gods and their followers. Play involves actions such as improving pastures, exploration, trading with your neighbors, and raiding. You can even travel to the Otherworld to visit your gods. You also need to deal with crises ranging from marauding dinosaurs to diplomatic requests to illicit love. Your choices have a politico-economic impact, but some consequences might not be obvious for decades.
It’s set in Glorantha (the world of the games RuneQuest, HeroQuest, and 13th Age), where the laws of physics are subordinate to the whims of the gods and spirits.
Six Ages is immensely replayable, thanks to over 400 interactive scenes with multiple outcomes. Short episodes and automatic saving mean you can play even when you only have a minute or two. The built-in saga writes down the story for you. And advisors with distinctive personalities help you track your cows.

Oaths of the Riddermark

The "Oaths of the Riddermark" book for The One Ring RPG is now out for preorders (you can get the PDF now):
http://shop.cubicle7store.com/Oaths-of-the-Riddermark-PD

I've done some work for it:

© 2016 Sophisticated Games and Cubicle 7 Entertainment Middle-earth, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the characters, items, events and places therein are trademarks or registered trademarks of The Saul Zaentz Company d/b/a Middle-earth Enterprises and are used under license by Sophisticated Games Ltd and their respective licensees.

What's in the Box?!

Last week I found a box full of old drawings of mine. Most of these were drawn 15-13 years ago. (I was 14-16). It's quite fun to see where this whole art thing started.

On top there were notebooks full of roleplaying stuff. I used to DM for our group, so there are many maps and I also drew scenes from the adventures we played through.

 (this was a really fun game, we played while hiking. So no dice rolls, just roleplaying. I didn't even have a story prepared in advance, had to make it up on the go. And yes, I was obviously into Mike Mignola's artwork. :))

This is a map of the world we played in. Yeah, a single continent (more like an island) with all the climates we could ask for. :D Classic.

I sure went through the angsty teenager phase too. 

My learning years, this was an attempt to (very poorly) ape Ron Tiner. 

This is pure gold. :D I had no idea who Drizzt was, but a gaming magazine mentioned he used two scimitars and was something like an elf. Obviously, his face has to be in shadow (I don't know what he's supposed to look like! Red eyes though.). Why the blue feathery cape, or why he's sitting on a mouldy dragon skeleton and a pile of gold? No idea. This one is probably one of the oldest bits in the box.

A comic I started drawing while visiting my grandmother. As far as I understand the story, it's a cyberpunk world where the Inuit people took over thanks to some kind of technology or drug they invented or discovered. I think I started reading Shadowrun at the time. :)

 

A Hellboy comic I never finished. The story (as I remember it) was about Hellboy and an undead knight teaming up to tame a hellhound that escaped from Hell in the 15th century. It starts with a very James Bond-like moment, Hellboy is chasing a shaman through a dimensional portal and the spell backfires, exploding the shaman all over the place. (Hellboy is fine, of course, he always falls everywhere.)

To finish up, here's a silly doodle thing. No idea why the sound of an arm being hacked off would be "SLAP".