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.

Two Stood Against Many

"Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, or why we died. All that matters is that two stood against many. That's what's important!"  
- Conan the Barbarian (1982)

Scenes depicting a battle of a few brave heroes against a horde of enemies continue to be used in fiction, being drawn to such stories seems to be in human nature. The pathos, sympathy for the underdog, admiration of skill and bravery, all add to the appeal.

Doing such a scene in film is difficult for various reasons, most related to the fact we as viewers recognize certain aspects going against what we perceive as "realistic". 

Film makers get away with some of them - in massive battles there always seems to be a space around the hero, a few metres of air to allow for fancy moves and to give him time to recover while enemies approach one by one.
Still, there are different approaches and layers to such a scene and watching several of my favourites, I thought about them and why they do or don't work.

1) Intent and confidence 

This is such a subtle thing, but fairly important in my opinion. Holywood movies sometimes suffer for this, because stuntmen playing the bad guys are simply much more skilled than the hero played by a famous actor. The years of training and muscle memory show in their movements - the hero supposedly slaughtering multiple enemies with ease has to be carefully photographed from specific angles and helped by frequent cutting between shots, to hide flaws and enhance the way his moves look and feel. At the same time, the baddies move much better and have to visibly restrain themselves to not rush all in at the same time, they have to telegraph their moves to a ridiculous degree etc. They're also very determined to run at the hero and die, no matter how many of their comrades were butchered before their eyes.

Watching Japanese chambara movies recently, I noticed this aspect of them to be rather different. 

Watch this clip of Toshiro Mifune's samurai roles. Mifune being the protagonist is extremely good at being confident, the ultimate badass. He changes between cocky, goofy and serious, but look at the way he moves - low centre of gravity, upright body, look of disgust on his face. Now watch the baddies - lowly gangsters and stoic samurai, they notice their comrades being cut down, they waver, flail their arms and shuffle and fall back in fear. This is how you put many enemies around the hero and not get him swarmed instantly!

2) Movement

Nothing looks more fake than the hero standing in one spot and having the enemies run into his sword one by one. Most successful one-against-many scenes have the protagonist move around a lot. 
- you need to minimize the amount of enemies able to strike you at once. Move to make them get in each other's way, move to a place where they can only reach you one by one etc.
- if you strike them first, you win. This is related to intent - it takes experience and training to get over the fear of being hurt. Most people will not rush in on you. This is a very interesting part of group dynamics and psychology. Watch videos of riots or police training for riots and you'll see what I mean. Or, if you've ever participated in fighting games/sports like SCA, you know what I mean. Even if it's not your real life at stake, you move without thinking - stay closer to a friendly group, don't get surrounded, have someone else to take a hit for you etc.

Warning, this is a very disturbing video of real people getting seriously hurt!!!
(violence starts around the 7th minute)

In this clip, a single man armed with a knife manages to stab several (!!) policemen carrying guns before they take him down. Even trained professionals don't always respond as we'd expect. How does he manage such a thing? It's odd, he just runs from one guy to the next real fast and stabs them. Same way Toshiro Mifune cuts down those gangsters.
In this video a supposed boxer takes on multiple opponents in a street fight. Notice the continuous movement and how he moves them as well, to always keep just one guy in front.

So what are some successful examples of a good use of movement/intent/confidence trinity? 

Conan and the battle of the mounds does it well. Both Conan and Subotai hit and run from incoming enemies and they use the complex battlefield to break line of sight, ambush and avoid getting mobbed.

The landing attack in Troy is also quite good. Brad Pitt is helped by camera angles and shot cuts a LOT though. He's an athletic guy, the choreography is very fine, but some time ago I've seen this fight being shot in a behind-the-scenes video and it looked much less impressive, almost silly. Notice he also moves all the time - running, turning and (famously) jumping.

You can see great emphasis on intent and fighter morale as well as a lot of hero movement in old samurai movies - Hideo Gosha's for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_eddPRh5eY   - Sword of the Beast
http://youtu.be/naZ5toWI2_M?t=1h19m50s  - Three Outlaw samurai

I've been thinking about the ways I could use this in illustrations, because last stand and one-against-many scenes are very common in fantasy art. Perhaps some of the enemies might be visibly wavering, shaken or terrified? It's easy to settle on a very static "none shall pass" pose for the protagonist, because it's simple to build a powerful composition around it. But perhaps I could try something more dynamic with a hero in the middle of a movement?

What are your favourite one-against-many scenes? Got any examples of really bad ones? Share in the comments! :)