Hello everyone!
While work on our game continues, we want to begin introducing you to the team behind the game.
To start things off, we're going jump straight into our art team!
The Art Team
The art team consists of Yuni Jang (South Korea) and Ilya Sipyagin (Russia) and together they bring a unique blend of both cultures and inspirations to the game. In this first team focus, we're going to look at Yuni and her experiences working on Pastel!
What is your process for drawing?
Our basic character creation always starts out with a hand-painted version!
Normally at the beginning of the creative process, I would search for inspiration from a few sources, and after that use my imagination to get a consistent idea of what I want. Once I've got that, I draw the initial sketch.
Once I'm happy with the sketch, I'll then pass it over to our 2D artists who convert it into digital art, or sometimes I give the sketch directly to the 3D artists.
When I worked on drawing Pastel (our heroine), we followed all of the steps from this process. I draw a couple of different sketches and passed that to our 2D artists who adapted it to a digital sketch, then finally our 3D modeler created the final character.
Do you work together on designs, or do you work separately?
Ilya and I tend to work together (as there are many designs, objects, and characters in the game) so when we start to work on an object or character, we would discuss everything from the background story to the appearance, then one of us would start to draw it, but we'd always exchange feedback with each other.
Do you or Illya specialize in a specific art style?
I would say that I prefer geometrical or traditional approaches to my art while Ilya is highly interested in biological fantasy!
Approximately how long does it take you to draw a scene for Pastel?
That really depends on what the art is and how complex it is. The quickest that I've completed something was a few hours and the longest can take over a week. However, on average I'd say about 2-3 days is the normal duration.
What was your favorite part of the game to draw?
My favorite part was creating the Samsara stage in the game as it shows the many worlds in our game through the symbols and its actual form!
I'll share an image of it, so do note that every image is connected to one of the game levels!
And this is what it looks like in-game
What is your favorite model to draw?
It has to be the main character design! From the first step to the very last, creating Pastel (the character) was extremely demanding, but it was very fun! While drawing her, we had to put a lot of thought into creating her as we had to think about her emotions during each part of the story, how that would impact her looks, what her backstory was, and so on!
I'd say that throughout the entire process, we (both of us) really have become fully attached to her!
Was there anything that you disliked drawing?
Honestly, we don't have any dislikes. There were a few images that were really hard to draw, and so gave us a few concerns, but even with that, we didn't dislike anything.
Personally, I found drawing the level 6 arena boss to be very hard, mainly because we lost our amazing first sketch. That said, looking back at everything now, I actually think that the final re-drawn version came out better than the original!
Here we have the art side of things
And here is the in-game version
What do you use to draw for Pastel?
Both of us prefer classical pencil drawing!
Digital painting is really lovely, but to me, it lacks emotions. Obviously this is an entirely personal opinion, but I believe that art should start out on paper first, and only after that should we make the digital version. The reason is simply that I feel that if you start on a digital version right away, you can't really get the full set of feelings and emotions as you would by drawing it on paper first. Again, this is just my personal thoughts, there will definitely be others that disagree and that's totally fine!.
And to end this, do you have any tips for people who may want to become a game artist?
The simple thing that I want to recommend to everyone is to directly draw what you imagine in the first place.
Just start your drawing, then add more and more to it, step by step, sketch by sketch, and as a result, it will transform to a proper, world created by your imagination.