The Domovoi, a Twine game by Kevin Snow, has been released. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be posting my art and sketches from the game. If you haven't checked it out yet, please go take a look -- it's free and short!
The red corner -- a small devotional space prepared in traditional Eastern Orthodox homes -- is an important location in the story. Like the narrator notes, it ties into themes of patriarchal power and religion, which is also emphasized by the iconic towel depicting the domovoi's master.
The Sick Man, a beautiful painting by Vasili Maximov that also happens to grace the Wikipedia page for icon corners. This was one of the primary references I used for the towel illustration, and probably also influenced my close attention to the wood grain of the walls.
Having little background on icon towels, Kevin provided me with a ton of great references. The style here is really interesting to draw.
A portrait by Abram Arkhipov, a Russian painter of the late 19th / early 20th centuries. I used this as primary reference for the domovoi's master. I also looked at some of Arkhipov's other works (particularly The Mask Shop) both to get a better sense of peasant life and to have some more visual references of period interiors.
Initial concept art for the iconic towel, including the overall composition and details of the master portrait. I wanted to use a sort of underlighting to give the towel an unsettling, isolated look (like something you'd have to examine in a Silent Hill game). I also wanted to give the master's portrait the crossed eyes that the text describes, but sadly I think it got a little lost in the final illustration.
An unused version of the final towel illustration that displays a full bust of the master. It was pretty obvious that it would be hard to distinguish the details here at the final web size, so I decided to focus on the master's face in the revision.
The towel transformed by the domovoi.
Originally I don't think we were going to include some of these variation illustrations, but after reading the first drafts, I thought they might be too fun to pass up. I specifically tried to draw some of the distortions described in the original draft, but I had a little bit of trouble hitting the mark. Kudos to Kevin, who ran with my illustration and tweaked the text in future scripts to match the picture I had drawn. (Did I mention that this was an incredible collaboration?)
My favorite details here are the creepy little faces that appear in the wall. The idea occurred to me while drawing the wood grain for the original version, so I decided to go with it and plant them in there.
The "soaring eagle" towel that the soldier displays in one of the possible endings.
Kevin told me that Lenin images like these were actually fairly common at the time -- in fact, some of them are a lot more heroically exaggerated than the one I drew here.
Though the portrait and border are a bit elaborate, I deliberately made the fringe much simpler to contrast against the master's towel.
Some of my favorite details in these pictures get a little lost up top, so I wanted to show them here. It was a lot of fun to draw these.
The perspective on the portrait is a little bit forced because I wanted it to be visible. It's probably also not a good idea to keep plants near candles... but then again, the care required here might be seen as an expression of great devotion.
The face of doom. You get this in one of the secret endings if you collect all the stars.
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