It's been a while since we last spoke about how the art for Gremlins, Inc. is being made (here is the story about the "Jurors for Hire" card). Today we'll about about the menu background for the Winter Season (which in a few days will be replaced by something else) –
THE ARTIST
For this artwork, we commissioned Alik Sarkisyan – a freelance artist based in Russia whom we've known for several years, but never got to work together with before. Alik is typically working on sci-fi projects, most of which tend to be photo-realistic. For Gremlins, Inc., though, he had to switch in order to match the overall game style that we have.
CONCEPT & REFERENCES
The brief for this artwork was as follows: we're showing how a clockwork town may look like, if the clockwork has been dropped in a pile of snow (by some terrible accident). As gremlins live on the inside of the mechanisms, this would be an emergency. A very rare occasion.
ALIK:
"First of all, I had to gather some references. You can see that I’ve tried to catch the atmosphere of an industrial, yet sophisticated town in winter. I love layered cityscapes with pronounced atmosphere, where level of detail and contrast and color diffuse as we reach the skyline. And when you add snow to that, it becomes magical. That was the aim. The mistake I've made here is that I overlooked the overall architectural style of the game that we were going for ːmaliceː."
THE FIRST DRAWINGS
When we received the first sketches, we both loved them and hated them! They showed great detail... but somehow reminded of a different sort of town, not the steampunk clockwork that we're so used to.
ALIK:
"My first drawings turned out to be way too gothic, as you can see above. While I was drawing, I had a quickly assembled kitbash of references on my monitor as the reference point. I scanned and assembled a few pencil drawings, to add more atmosphere, and then I’ve added a flat tone to each layer. I proceeded to work on the line weight and opacity as well, to mimic the atmosphere not only in tone – but in line, too."
FROM GOTHIC TO INDUSTRIAL
After a round of changes, the town finally moved towards the style of steampunk. Industry. Factories. Money. That's what we wanted all along!
ALIK:
"After the first round of feedback from the team, the picture has changed significantly. I re-shot all the linework with a digital camera and I've redrawn what was the left part of the picture, switching from gothic style to more of an industrial look with a lot of pipes. In addition, I’ve redone the middle ground layer on the right side. All the other linework I’ve altered digitally. We have decided, that we need already existing assets in the shot, to set the tone of the background. So here is the gremlin elevator."
SHADING & COLOURING
ALIK:
"After the linework was mostly set in place, the time came to shade and color the whole thing. At this stage, it was mainly a matter of simply putting more hours of work into this background. I have distorted railing in the foreground to remove the “digital/mechanical” feel. Also, instead of the tower clocks, the team suggested to place there a drawing of the actual gremlin calendar, which worked very well (this calendar was supposed to be in the game, but in the end did not make it through). I tried to not go overboard with the shading, and to keep it clean enough."
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And that's it for today! Meanwhile, if you follow our studio Instagram's account, you might have already seen the new main menu background that will arrive to the game (for a limited time) at the end of the current week – in just a few days ːnotebookː.
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