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 Candle
The candle scene was the first title screen that I painted and, in some ways, still the most satisfying. Kevin and I both really liked the composition right from the original concept sketch, and the final allowed me to develop a lot of the details that I had been practicing throughout the whole project.
There was one thing that gave us a brief panic, though: the bed. I had included it reflexively in the original concept sketch, but it turns out that a bed of this sort would have been -- at best -- a sort of luxury item for a man of the master's social standing. Most peasants would have simply slept on sheets or blankets atop the oven or fireplace. Fortunately, Kevin did some additional research and found enough mentions of peasant beds that we both felt comfortable with leaving it in.
Influence: The paintings of 17th-century Dutch artist Godfried Schalcken, renowned for his candlelight scenes.
The Bench
I knew from the start that we had to have a picture of the domovoi on his master's bench, but towards the end, I got the idea to combine it with a view of the oven pit -- a grim foreshadowing of one of the domovoi's possible fates.
I really, really like how this one turned out overall. This is the most complete shot of the hut's interior that I ever illustrated, and it was a lot of fun to gradually build up the scene and add in all the little household details. The only thing that slightly bugs me is the domovoi's frame -- he seems a little too bulky here compared to the other title screens.
Influence: Once again, Wizardry: Tale of the Forsaken Land. The dull color palette, lighting scheme, and clutter of objects are directly inspired by the blacksmith's shop screen.
The Threshold
This was by far the most difficult of the main title screens, and for awhile I felt really uncertain about it. I've since come to peace with it, but there's no question that it was challenging for me at the time.
Part of it had to do with the composition itself. There were a lot of positioning and detail problems that I had to solve -- I fretted over the placement of the hut and whether or not it matched with previous depictions in the in-game illustrations; I worried about the placement and distance of the trees; I feared that the domovoi's expression would be unreadable at that size; I fought with the color palette and lighting.
I was also going through a bit of personal turbulence at the time. I had just finished up a stressful year of work only to have oral surgery over the holiday break. While recovering from that, I was also starting to come down with pre-launch anxiety -- the prospect of the The Domovoi being put in front of a wider audience was suddenly becoming terrifyingly close, and that made the third title seem all the more important and final. So naturally I became hyper-critical of every little detail in the picture, and probably got really annoying to any human being within reach.
Influence: The illustrations of Russian folktale artist Ivan Bilibin, whose depictions of nature are both beautiful and foreboding.
The Portal
I mentioned above that I eventually came to peace with the third title screen, probably because I transferred a lot of my opprobrium to the portal page illustration. It's my own fault though -- I rushed a little bit on this one. A lot of the details are similar to those from the third title, only executed a lot more loosely.
My main reference here was one of the title concept drawings that I included in the previous post, but I was disappointed that I couldn't capture quite the same mood in the final portal illustration. Still, some of the details came out alright.
One more shot of the big lug for the road. Thanks for reading!
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