Keepers of the City
October 2020 - December 2020
School assignment for Mike Pachenco, now personal project
What initially was a semester-long project became my personal endeavor. This was initially called Acumen & Folly as a collective group name with two other students I worked alongside in this class. We had to develop concept artwork for an app store game. The game could be anything we wanted. I took inspiration from the Wolf Among Us, an episodic storytelling game driven by choices that the player makes. It was set in New York and features five fantasy characters who are going to attempt a heist.
Process
Since this was a digital illustration class, we were utilizing our skills with Photoshop and Illustrator to produce the work. Since my game had a familiar setting I had to reacquaint myself with landmarks in New York. Then for the characters themselves I was gathering many references from pinterest and some of my favorite heist movies for them to feel archetypal, but still my own.
Meet Merlin
Merlin, the wizard of Arthurian Legend, now resides in modern day New York after centuries of galavanting around the world. For his design I wanted to keep him modern, but still have some flair that says he not just an average guy, such as a white collar waistcoat and tattoos of wings. I wanted to have the character designs to have an action adventure look, so pseudo realistic, but stylized so the characters can be redrawn.
Some challenges came from figuring out which program I wanted to use. Illustrator could create vectorized and clean linework, but Photoshop allowed me to be more hands on. I was able to use illustrator later on for the logo and key art for this project and dedicated the drawings to photoshop.
My professor and my classmates all gave praise to my work for the semester as they could all tell how invested I had become in the class. I also shared this work with a good friend of mine who does a lot of creative projects including voice over work and it became our passion project to one day produce as an animated show. The work for this project continues to this day as a personal project and my practice as a visual development artist.
Meet Peaseblossom
For Peaseblossom, I wanted her to still resemble a human, but as a fairy I gave her elven ears, pink skin, violet hair, and poison green eyes. I wanted her to feel beautiful, but in a way that you could not trust her. To convey that her expression is sultry and she always glares. I added these color dots on her dress to illuminate the costuming as if she were covered in fairy dust.
Storyboards
Meet SWAMPY
Swampy is a talking anthropomorphic glass frog. I used mostly the screen and lighten layer tools on photoshop to give the translucency of his body. Because he is also a hacker and tech aficionado I gave him a Steve Jobs turtleneck to hide his strange body, and a hood to represent him being undercover as a hacker for the city. The colors for the characters needed to feel specific to the character so they all weren’t stomping on each other’s color palette.
App Icons
Meet Ursine
Ursine is the muscle of this group, but he is reliable and responsible. I gave him a relaxed look as if he had a long day at work and just went home to his family. I wanted all the characters who looked the most human to feel like they were different ethnicities. For Ursine I wanted to give a sort of Native American background with his turquoise necklace and bracelets.
Illustrated Scenes
Meet Nora
Nora looks like a teenage girl, but she has an unusual quirk. She is possessed, voluntarily, by a demon. I went with mostly reds and muted colors to show that connection and her undershirt has some tears and is shredded. She still needed to appear human so I went with appealing features such as softer brown eyes, but not beautiful because I did not want to create a character too similar to Peaseblossom so they all feel different.
