Hey everyone, Alpha 16 is officially on Steam Stable! We’re fixing some last (sound/art/memory/combat) bugs, which we’ll hopefully get you as a patch this week, after which we plan to pivot over to some long overdue infrastructure cleanup. After THAT we’ll get started in A17 proper, which will return our focus to better and more stable building.
As some of you who attended last Wednesday’s stream may have heard, last week we also welcomed Allie Strom to our team as a full time artist! Allie has been made splash screen art for us since she joined Radiant in time for Alpha 11, but now she will expand her repertoire to include modeling, UI elements, animation, and vfx! Last week she officially moved her desk over to join Team Stonehearth, and jammed out a truly awe inspiring combat scene for Alpha 16’s splash. For Desktop Tuesday this week, let’s take a closer look at her process, from concept to finished product!
A16 Splash Screen
Recap from the video:
- Steam Stable? New Splash Screen!
- Allie’s done multiple splash screens for us since Alpha 11, plus the story picker illustrations at the start
- This splash was meant to celebrate our new combat classes and our new monsters. Goal was cute AND epic
- Started with sketches on notebook of new classes, to get the look/proportions right
- Then composition sketches: where everyone should be placed on the page so that a viewer could look at the picture and see not just all the people, but also little stories about how they all relate to each other
- Good composition keeps the eye moving around the page, discovering little details about the story of the picture
- Early passes generated some good ideas: ogre in the back, fighting archer
- Also: party goblin!
- But early passes were too static; good guys and bad guys all in two lines
- Final composition is much more dynamic: archer in the front, shooting the ogre in the back, who is attacking the knight, who is protecting and being protected by the cleric. In the meantime, Kobold archer is perched exactly where an archer should be–on the only high ground available, shooting down at footman, and being counterbalanced by goblin, who is about to be set on fire by the archer’s fire arrow
- Allie’s previous work on SH has been mostly digital, but she’s always told us that to really capture a pen and ink feel, you have to use actual pen and ink. So she took the Photoshop sketch, printed it out, and redrew it via lightbox on paper with pens and colored pencils
- Also, she did a color test, with real watercolors, to see if that look would work with the style
- Then she scanned the picture back in, and did a color test in Photoshop to draft out what colors would work on each element of the picture
- Using the colortest to select colors, she then did a final pass; each color on it’s own layer, for optimal pop and shading
- Finally, we examine the finished piece close up!
Other Announcements
One: For a second week in a row, streams should happen at their usual times this week. Miraculous!
Two: As we return our focus to building, we ask again: are there building templates that are giving your hearthlings trouble? Please post them for us on discourse.stonehearth.net. Thanks!
