For the latest university project I had chosen the book cover brief; to create potential entries for the Penguin Design Awards 2012, adults and children’s brief, and to illustrate a cover of my choice. The decision was an easy one – The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss.
Concepts (Warning: May contain spoilers!)
It was difficult to get the ball rolling on this one, thinking conceptually rather than picking an event and illustrating it literally. But I knew that the moon was a vital piece of the puzzle – “he stole the moon and with it came the war”…“this shaper of the dark and changing eye stretched out his hand against the pure black sky. He pulled the moon, but could not make her stay. So now she moves ‘twixt mortal and the fae.”(The Wise Man’s Fear, pg 670)
The moon is the link between realms, therefore is a huge part of the reasons why much of what happens in the story is even possible. It felt very necessary to have this on the cover.
I knew also that I wanted to put Kvothe on the front, for obvious reasons. I did not want some overdramatic pose however, nor a straight forward portrait. It needed to be more subtle and fragile. His eyes needed to be closed because through much of his tale he is always watching closely, observing everything around him, but he never truly sees. This is his downfall.
Felurian weaves Kvothe a shaed – a cloak made of shadow and starlight. This idea fascinated me, as well as the idea that the fae are like a shaed over the mortal realm. To have a veil of stars flowing down from the moon over Kvothe’s face is how I wanted to represent the power and magic the fae hold over mortals.
Another idea was to incorporate butterfly wings into the veil of stars. When Kvothe discovered the Cthae, it tore butterflies in half before his eyes – specifically the red ones. This is a threat to Kvothe – the Cthae knows just how fragile he is, how he can be torn apart at any moment. And yet there are still many live butterflies, rising from the destruction much like through all of the devastation Kvothe must face, small beauty can rise from the destruction of great beauty.
As you can see, by this point I was becoming a little too dotty. The image I had in mind just was not coming out.
Back to the drawing board.
I was still happy with the leading concepts and with the individual elements. They just needed swapping round and cleaning up.
I did not need the large red butterfly – Kvothe is already there. They are, essentially, one in the same. The blue/white/silver butterflies could be spawning from Kvothe – as the beauty rises from destruction, drawn to the moon as the fae are, binding the mortal and faen realms. If they are rising from his eye, this also fits with the butterfly-like vein patterns the Felurian had on her eyelids.
Overall, it means the same thing. But I was much happier with the composition, confident that it would give a more accurate representation of the feel of the book. That was the main point.
Here is the final result:
I dipped a toothbrush in ink and used a palette knife to disturb the bristles, causing a random star-like texture to settle onto paper. After scanning and inverting, I had a fast, believable sky.
The texture on the background is one of old dried roots on a wall, where ivy once was. This seemed perfect, as roots are deep and strong and although it seems the surface of life is destroyed, the roots are always there. This reflects various concepts throughout the book. The texture gives a sort of nebula feel – but a very subtle one.
The wings on the back are aligned almost like grave stones, again representing all of the destruction.
Overall I am pleased with the result – so much more than the first attempt at least. I feel like for the first time I have managed to convey how a piece of text makes me feel and how I picture it in my mind. Hopefully it has captured the feeling of the book for other readers also.
The litle guy will run automatically. When you need to go over a block, press space and he climbs. Some of the blocks you will need to make a safe journey are on top of poles made of stars – you can click on these stars to knock the boxes down & climb on them.
I have had heaps of fun making the graphics for this, hopefully it looks interesting enough. The game play is good though we didn’t have much time to make many maps (I made level 3…it’s the best, yes?!), but hopefully you can get a good idea of the game and what it could become!
Maybe someday we will remake it, with more time and more features. I hope so
I was not happy at all with the box textures and really wanted them to have depth. I made them look like 3D cubes, but we quickly encountered a problem. The cubes were made so that, when another was put next to it, it would cover the side face and line up with the front face. However, because it renders from the top left to bottom right, each of these side edges was showing over the one behind it, making it look like this:
How did we solve it?
Flip the cube!!
Because the sides would now be on the bottom and right, each cube beneath or to the right would render on top, like this:
Menus
Here’s the main menu pretty much finished:
The Select Level menu is finished but the actual level screen shots don’t exist yet, so I’ve put in a temporary one. I went away from the idea of the leves being on poles like the cubes in the game. Simplicity always seems to be the better way, so I made a grid of stars that matches the poles, but is neater and less fussy. I tried to make it look as though the lines are weaved into one another by masking the textures on the crossovers alternately.
Only 21 hours left!! :O Although I can’t complain, I am not exactly losing sleep over this…James has much more work to do than me!
Heres the last video he posted, though it’s before a lot of the textures were updated:
When planning the basics of how the boxes will look, I really wanted to add some perspective to make them look 3D. The boxes would have hit detection between the top of the square and the top of the texture to make it look as though the player is stood on top of the box.
This seemed like a good idea, but then I realised when the boxes are put in rows the perspective of each box will be going to their own one point, therefore it would all be messed up and look as though they are not cube shapes, or that they are curving inwards. To keep it simple I would have to stick to just a normal flat square and try to add depth with texturing.
The best size seems to be 64×64 as this means it is more efficient for James to program as well as looking like a good size to create textures and character animations for.
I have made the basics of the boxes for James to start adding them to the game. I will be editing them later on when I have made more of the rest of the content.
One of the main features of the game is the ability to slash boxes down to manipulate the route. It feels important to include this in the main menu, aswell as the obvious box theme.
After a few thumbnails I came up with the idea of hinting at the solar system with the boxes, with the earths orbit as the slash line, chopping down the “sun” and “Moon” symbols, which would inevitably leave just the earth all alone. This seemed like a good way of symbolising the theme “Alone”, the game plan and also the features all in one.
I created a very basic layout plan so that James could program the menu. Later on when I have created some of the in-game graphics I will have more of an understanding of the style and therefore can create the final textures for the menu. Because the layout is planned it will stay the same even when textures are updated, which will make James’ life much simpler!
Level Selection Menu
The obvious idea here is that screenshots will show level options and that they will be layed out much like the boxes will be in-game, on poles or hanging from above.
James asked for a layout that would allow for him to add or remove levels simply, without having to change loads of positionings and textures. The simplest way to do this and to keep any number of levels looking symmetrical, therefore neat and pleasing to the eye, would be to have a 3×3 grid in which the levels can be placed.
Also, through messing with the poles and ropes layout in Photoshop I realised the optimal choice would be to have all of them going in one direction in rows. I wanted each box to have a pole from a different direction, but there are problems like if the middle box is not filled, you will see all of the textures crossing over and it looks ugly.
The only way around it is to stay really simple and just have 3 rows, so none of this needs to be changed when levels are added.
For the next 3 days (Starting 3 and a half hours ago) I will be taking part in the Ludum Dare game jam…scary! I have never done anything like this before so I am getting really into it.
I am working on graphics with the AmazingJames Wrightson on programming.
The theme in this round is “Alone” so we will be making a side-scroller platformer game called “On Top of the World”, where the player is constantly on the move running for his life as the world comes crashing down behind him. He must solve puzzles whilst continuously moving to ensure he has a safe path to follow. This will not be easy!
I am going to be using Adobe Photoshop CS5 for textures and Anime Studios 8 for animations. James will be making the beautiful particle effects, but I get to boss him around on it!
I also have input on the game ideas and functions aswell as graphics, which is great because I definately need more experience in this. Ideas seem to be flowing pretty well so far so I will keep updating with new things!
The earliest recordings of communication between mankind is that of the decorated ochre rock found in Blombos Cave, Circa 75,000 BCE – 73,000 BCE. It is thought that this is not just a pattern, but that because of the way the basic lines are organised that it could be the earliest known recording of information. The Chauvet cave contains the oldest known cave art on earth, at up to 32000 – 35000 years. The images on the walls include accurate and detailed paintings of horses, lions, mammoths, rhinoceroces, bison and bears, depicting the events involving the inhabitants of the cave, such as hunting.
Imagery and early forms of text for communication has moved through Egypt on the walls of pyramids, Papyrus scrolls with black ink from carbon and red ink from ochre; “Black was the normal colour for writing. Red was used to mark the start of a text, or to highlight key words and phrases, like quantities in medicines, or for the names of demons in religious papyri. More colours were needed for illustrations, such as those in the Book of the Dead.” (British Museum)
The Egyptian Book of the Dead is a collection of illustrated scrolls full of spells that the Egyptians believed would help ferry them to the afterlife. Doccuments like these are some of the earliest recorded narative illustrations on materials like those we use today.
The oldest suriving printed book is the Diamond Sutra, printed in 868 using woodblock carving. It is made of seven pages, each pasted together to form a scroll. The doccument describes and illustrates the teachings of Buddha Siddhartha Guatama and is copied from one that would have been created by him during the years he preached, Circa 595-645. The illustrations are in simple black line, like the writing. This style of illustration developed as a way of creating images that describe; they hold a great deal of detail and so to keep the clarity and meaning readable only the outlines are drawn.
This style of illustration has been used for educational and communicative imagery whether it be maps, medical illustrations or 15th Century Coffee house Pamphlettes. The term “Graphics” originally meant “like writing” and “like truth” because of the way in which the imagery and lines are relaying information, and therefore are read, like writing.
“In art there is no need for colour…Give me a crayon [that is to say, chalk] and I will “paint” you a portrait” - Francisco De Goya (moving Pictures – Anne Holander)
Goya’s career with the Spanish royal workshops began in 1774, drawing cartoons (the word then used to mean preparation drawings for paintings, tapestries, stain glass windows etc.) for tapestries to be hung in the royal palaces.
In 1793 France declared war on Spain, and Goya travelled to Andalusia, returning a few months later completely deaf after surviving a severe illness. Los Caprichos, a set of 80 etchings illustrating “nightmarish visions symbolising a world against reason”,(MMA) were released for sale in 1799 but had to be witdrawn due to the nature of the images. Continuing the atrocities of war, Goya created The Disasters of War, a set of 85 etchings. These remained unpublished until after Goya’s Death.
Black and white was the most effective way Goya could represent his horrific visions. He needed not be distracted by colour, for this would be trying too much like trying to record nature. The use of fine black line is to “scratch forms into existence and then to splinter them, to create the distorting visual detritus that shudders around the edges of things seen in agonised haste or in semi-concious distraction, in fear or self-disgust”. (Moving Pictures – Anne Holander)
Odilon Redon, also known as Prince du Rêve(Prince of Dreams) created Hommage a Goya, a portfolio of six lithograph prints. This was part of his scheme to attract critics in making homages to renowned artistic figures, also including Edgar Allan Poe and Gustave Flaubert. The most memorable of his images are the black and white lithographs of strange dream-like creatures.
Due to a religious crisis in 1890 and a serious illness in 1894-95, Redon’s outlook on life had changed drastically and he had become a much “buoyant and cheerful personality”. Because of this, his work transformed from dark unsettling fantasies to vivid colour with idealised observations of nature.
Coincidentally this was around the time that CMYK printing was invented, in 1892-94. This however had no influence on Redon. The reason for colour was one of emotion, not of resources and technology. His art from that point was mostly done with pastel.
Black and white imagery has been created consistently by artists interested in describing the human condition, including Käthe Kollwitz. Early ambitions of being a painter soon changed when Kollwitz studied under instruction of Swiss artist Karl Stauffer-Bern in 1884, aged seventeen. “I wanted to paint…but he kept pointing me back to drawing”. She was also introduced to the work of Max Klinger. These were the foundations of Kollwitz’s life long venture into black and white.
Klinger, like Goya, believed that to use colour is to be boound to nature, that one cannot excape reality and create ideas other than those of material things. Painting was a visual art, intended for creating imagery of beauty. Drawing, however, could “confront the unbeautiful and the repugnant”. (Käthe Kollwitz – Elizabeth Prelinger)
“All masters of drawing develop in their works a conspicuous trend of irony, satire and caricature. They prefer to emphasize weakness, sharpness, hardness, and evil. Out of their works bursts almost everywhere a basic tone: The world should not be like this! they practice criticism with their stylus” - Max Klinger
Kollwitz used this as justification for following a freer path in her work, allowing her to research and explore the social issues that she found important. Because of this it was imperative that her work was easily accessible and relatively affordable.
Kollwitz’s most striking images include those from the War series of woodcuts, 1922-23. Rather than depicting the actual combat of war, she focuses on the home front and how it is affecting women and children. Unlike her etchings the woodcuts are simplified, purely black and white and are “posterlike in impact…Everything is expression, gesture and iconic form. In keeping with her wish that the series should travel the world with its message, Kollwitz adopted a stark black and white language of signs that would be universally understood”.(Elizabeth Prelinger) Kollwitz’s black and white art to this day remains some of the most powerful and emotional imagery within illustration and documentation.
John Tenniel, political cartoonist for Punch magazine and original illustrator for the Alice books, primarily used woodblock printing in black and white as a way to make easy money.
During 1845, Tenniel entered a competition to have his sixteen foot-high cartoon The Spirit of Justice to be hung in the Houses of Parliament. The work was displayed with other entries at Westminster Hall, and “after visiting the exhibition, Mr Punch produced some markedly ironic ‘cartoons’ of his own.”(Sir John Tenniel – Frances Sarzano) This is how the term comic developed the meaning that we still use today.
Charles Lutwig Dodgson (Lewis Carrol) requested in 1864 that Alice in Wonderland be illustrated by Tenniel, for his harsh and precise line work. Dodgson knew exactly how the images looked in his own mind, and gave Tenniel strict instructions for each illustration. “Alice could not be illustrated with fairy-tale gossamers; its characters are too trenchant with reality – though it is reality encountered on uncustomary planes”. (Frances Sarzano)
Alice in Wonderland has been interpreted many times in illustration, fine art, film, photography, even games. In 1967, political artist Ralph Steadman illustrated Alice in Wonderland following Tenniel’s footsteps and using black and white line-art to add satire. However Steadman’s ink lines are much more flowing and allow for the viewer’s own imagination.
“It is difficult to explain in words what the pictures are trying to say, and therefore my explanations are not precisely what I had in mind because they add shades of meaning which are not there. The reader can only interpret them in his own way, bringing his own observations to bear on the image he is looking at, so that he may agree or disagree with what I have tried to convey. When I set out to draw an idea, part of that idea is not yet formed and only takes shape and reveals itself as the drawing progresses. Consequently, the drawing acquires a life of its own and virtually takes over the direction it will follow — or so it seems.” – Ralph Steadman.
There seems to be a trend with black and white illustration, that of selective use of colour. Steadman’s cover has the title highlighted in red to make it stand out. This points back to the Egyptians highlighting the start of a text. Sue Coe uses this technique within her narrative illustrations, such as those found in Sheep of fools – an illustrated history of sheep welfare in trade. She uses colour to draw the eye to the important parts of the illustration, which displays a narrative to back up the text, so as even without the text the image can be read.
This technique too has been used within photography, film and games. The ways in which black and white can be used in conjunction with colour and technology can only enrich the viewers experience. It can be used to manipulate the emotions, to point the eye to where it should be, to create the feeling of nostalgia or to put one into a living nightmare. The reasons that it is so effective is that it is engraved within us; our primitive instincts connect black with darkness, night and fear, and white with peace and hope like day time. Colours vary depending on environments and cultures, but black and white is a universal language, and will always remain a powerful force within the arts.
Over the past few days I have been creating graphics for a prototype of a game called Starsurfer, developed by James Wrightson.
It is very basic and we will not be working on it any longer, as it was just a small project to learn from. Because of this I did not encounter any real problems and it all ran quite smoothly. The graphics are all made of single sprites and so there was no need to animate any elements. My job was very simple illustrations and James added particle effects and shaders where necessary.
Even though it was quick and simple there were still things to consider, such as balancing the graphics. It is useful to make sure the main elements are high quality, and the less important elements are of a basic quality all equal to eachother. Also, keeping the elements a consistent style eg. we used white outlines for all of the UI graphics and upgrades, and black outlines on the players.
If you would like to play the game you can download itHere.
Also if you would like to use any of the images in your own game,feel free to just take them from here!
Last Saturday a bunch of Illustration students and I helped out with the Big Draw Day. My friend Jo and I Had done a load of planning for the activities, which all were very successful! Jo had made a treasure trail from illustration student’s subverted images, so that children could look at the crazy animals and find the items they were made from. Using subverted imagery is an activity I would really reccomend for groups, as anyone can do it and come up with crazy funny imaginative stuff.
I made the wristbands for entry and also some body parts and hat templates for children to stick together and colour in…there were some very funny results!!
Here’s the poster which includes everyone’s drawings
There was also a HUGE roll of paper in the middle of the main entrance on which people could draw crazy monsters and pretty much anything they wanted.
Also we had a planet made of tights and wadding, inspired by Sarah Lucas’ installations. It was a planet that the children could stick their own hand made “treasures” onto…It made a great wig!
Overall I am pleased with the result – so much more than the first attempt at least. I feel like for the first time I have managed to convey how a piece of text makes me feel and how I picture it in my mind. Hopefully it has captured the feeling of the book for other readers also.
Kollwitz’s most striking images include those from the War series of woodcuts, 1922-23. Rather than depicting the actual combat of war, she focuses on the home front and how it is affecting women and children. Unlike her etchings the woodcuts are simplified, purely black and white and are “posterlike in impact…Everything is expression, gesture and iconic form. In keeping with her wish that the series should travel the world with its message, Kollwitz adopted a stark black and white language of signs that would be universally understood”.(Elizabeth Prelinger) Kollwitz’s black and white art to this day remains some of the most powerful and emotional imagery within illustration and documentation.
