If I somehow have any regular readers, welcome again to my humble little devblog! This is the one and only Boxronite, and, today, I’ll be going over Zaehbet, Draad’s artstyle. To be honest, I don’t really know how this won the poll when there’s far more interesting topics, such as how Ordateig works. But, again, there’s only a total of 5 votes…
For the actual breakdown of votes, tallied from all platforms I have, if you’re interested:
- Origins and basis of Ordateig: 1 vote
- Character creation process: 1 vote
- Zaehbet, Draad’s artstyle: 3 votes
Before we get into it, I just want to mention I finally got around to creating a Discord server. Check it out!
So, somewhat early into the ideation process of Zaehbet, Draad, I originally had the idea of just hand drawing all of the art assets by myself or with my little sister, on paper, and then scanning into digital format (sort of like those texture packs in Minecraft done by painting or sewing). A surprisingly significant part of this was initially inspired by Maul – Shadow Lord, just with colored pencil instead of paint.
While part of the motivation behind this idea was done because it would look unique, the main idea I had behind doing it was just so I didn’t have to spend any money. At this time, my budget was absolutely nothing, so alternative decisions had to be made.
Eventually, though, I came to my senses. Out of the somewhat limited list of things I can do, actually drawing art was not one of them. I may be able to formulate ideas of an idea, but the extent of my actual abilities is drawing a smiley sun in the corner of the page. And, honestly, I don’t think it would be the wisest of ideas to depend on my little sister, despite how grown-up she claims to be.
And, thus, I threw together an actual budget, and sent out a feeler for potential contract artists, which, if you’re interested, you can look at here (also, fun fact, this post got 10x the views as the actual announcement post on the same site).
It was during the process of contracting artists that Voloshenko helped me solidify the idea for the art style a bit more. Essentially, a more major technical problem with my previous idea was that there would always have to be some form of border if the foreground and background colors were too similar. Additionally, if it were to be physically drawn, then layering, error correction, and general adjustments after making the art would be much harder.
Thus, I fully dropped the idea of physically drawing with crayons and pencils, and instead pivoted more towards having the effect with digital textures and brushes. This would’ve put the game’s artstyle more in line with games like Omori or Valkyria Chronicles (unfortunately, I can’t find who suggested Valkyria Chronicles).
After some deliberation, I settled on the three artists that I’ve contracted to make art for Zaehbet, Draad:
- Character Art and Steam Capsule: Oridins.com
(I was told to credit Oridins.com, but the link is currently nonfunctional, so it links to the individual artist I contracted, Raxen). - Background Art: Sterki Herz
- CGs: Mishantics
Now, to be honest, once I gave the general ideas to the artists, much more specific details like ideas over shading, textures, etc left my hands. So, for those three of you who seemed hyper-interested in the art want to learn even more, feel free to go to one of those links above and contact them!
Therefore, we make the conclusion of this slightly shorter devblog, as I get back to preparing for the demo release. Make sure to give those artists some love, and tell me what you want to see for the next devblog on Friday, October 2nd, 7 pm UTC!
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