Greetings, fellow HoS lovers!
I’m not sure everyone here knows who I am but for a change it won’t be Valentin writing this post but me, his brother! A pleasure to meet you.
I’ve been involved in HoS’s development since the very beginning and mostly focused of the visuals and the art side of the game. From the multiple iterations of the tiles to the wallpapers and UI.
Today I’ll take you through the thoughts and process that went behind the making of this new wallpaper.
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The process
Where to start from? I needed an idea. I knew I wanted to draw some snow for this one. Snow has always been a long time love for me, and where I currently live (West of France) there isn’t any during winter, so snow it was gonna be!
Next step is finding the right setting, obviously it had to be WWII related. At the time I was looking at the part that Finland played in the war, and how they have defended themselves successfully against the Soviets. I ended up reading more about the Winter War and felt really inspired so I decided to go with that.
So did I grab my pencil and tablet and started sketching some ideas? No, not yet at least. The first and crucial thing to do when tackling such project is gathering a whole bunch of references for nothing and everything. I’ve put them all on a board using a tool called PureRef. I’ll be keeping it close by at every stage of the painting process.
^ Probably the one that inspired me the most for the light color and mood of the final painting.
^ Some trees and rocks from the Finnish lands.
^ Few old photographs for trucks, tanks and poses/uniforms for historical accuracy.
I then started the process of doing small sketches called thumbnails. It has the goal of keeping me from drawing blindly for a few hours the first idea that comes out of my head, before finding out that the composition doesn’t work and I have to start again. That way I throw down multiple ideas and focus on the ones I like the most and eliminate those that don’t work or aren’t as aesthetically pleasing.
These are the ones I did:
Yes they might be rough and not necessarily pretty but that’s not what they are here for. It’s kinda more for me to steer the illustration in a certain direction. I ended up liking bottom right one and went for it.
I then worked detailing a bit more and placing some elements that I wanted present *Spoiler* they did not all make it in the final illustration. Keeping it all in black and white for simplicity and better decision making concerning the values.
Little did I know that I would be changing a lot when passing to color, which is our next step!
^ I started with pretty low saturated tones, cleared the trees I had on the right making more place for your eyes to rest when looking at it. Also got rid of the rocks and the Finnish soldier on the bottom left because I felt like it didn’t really match the perspective I went for.
^ I blocked in the T-26, added a few abandoned trucks (GAZ AA). Some pines in the foreground …
^ Here I brought back the trees on the right, the illustration felt too optimistic, like a visual representation of the saying « being out of the woods ». I wanted it to feel epic, more like a moment of peace and warmth before reentering in the cold shade of the pines, uncertain if there were gonna see the sun again on the other side.
^ And here goes the final details, an epic sky, light passing through the thick layer of clouds in the background. Detailing our most likely freezing cold soldiers. Some sharpening here and there, a little post processing and the illustration is done!
The whole process starting from researches to the final illustration took me about 2 weeks. One focused on finding what I wanted to, finding the references I needed and coming up with the composition. The other one was mostly painting, painting, painting and the last details.
I also have a time-lapse of the painting process starting at the color stage, here’s a link :
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Well friends, that will be all for this little journey through my process to a completely new wallpaper. I really hope you like it! I had an extra fun time doing it. Thank you for reading and on Valentin’s behalf I wish you all an amazing end of year, have a great time!