Mezzanine Stairs

It had become abundantly clear that I’d better start working on art, and quickly, for I had a staggering amount of it to produce. Never mind the superfluous stuff like these dialogue portraits (circa 2006) that you see above, or even a user interface for the game — more pressingly, there was a legion of maps and character art that needed creating.

This meant that I’d need to learn how to draw...or relearn? I hadn’t done much in the way of art since I was in high school, and though I’d been told that I had at least a marginal shred of talent, I was woefully out of practice.

More and more I felt like I was in way over my head. However, as Crack and I had been increasingly talking about the construction of our game, a mutual friend of ours by the name of Metapharsical began to take note of what we were working on. He had been doing 3D modeling for a few years, and when he expressed an interest in working on art, I was more than eager to accept his help.

Given his field of practice, we figured it’d be best if he focused on map artwork, while I would deal with general design ideas and character art.

I dumped upon Metapharsical the burden of illustrating the vague, strange, and constantly shifting ideas I had regarding the environment of World’s End. Above you can see some of his earliest efforts. To this day I remain particularly fond of that train!

I was gradually getting into the groove of drawing, and doing so with a mouse, no less. Designing the characters was easy enough, based as they were largely upon the old RPG Maker images. But there were some...issues. I think it’s best illustrated by this image:

I’ll let that speak for itself, but apart from anything else (clichéd anime faces and all), the most glaring issue to me is the complete negligence of isometric perspective. It seemed I might need assistance with the character art as well!

We’ll get further into how things progressed next time, but finally, since I promised several installments ago that I’d include such things, I feel semi-obliged to show a glimpse of the dialogue as it stood in late 2006:

Tevoran: (storms in through the door) Wake up! Everyone! This is very serious! (bangs on a cowbell)

Ysabel: Haven’t I heard that before?

Tevoran: Everyone, come here. (they comply) Look, this is going to be more difficult than I thought. I think Martin’s been imprisoned.

Ivan: What now?

Zofia: This is going to be terrible for business...

Ysabel: Wait, you said you ‘think’ he’s been imprisoned?

Tevoran: The man on the street says that Martin returned to this city from the Eastern Front several days ago. He was last seen entering Oskar’s palace.

Zofia: Which man?

Tevoran: Martin.

Zofia: No, the man on the street. I wouldn’t trust him if I were you. Not if it’s...that guy...

Ivan: Are you inhaling too many fumes over there or something?

Zofia: Maybe I should take a break.

P.S. You can find Metapharsical’s latest work at Imgur.