(new post - art) commissioned illustrations for Rosewater
(hi everyone, just realized i forgot to send an email for this when i first posted it - you’re gonna get one more email immediately after this for a different blog post i just finished up. apologies, and thanks for being subscribed! view this post directly on my blog if you like)
got to do something a little out of the box for this job! i was asked earlier this year to draw some cutscene illustrations for a western point-and-click game, called Rosewater. i made two sets of drawings - a shorter set for a story featuring coyote and kingfisher, and a longer one for a fox and a turtle.
the makers behind the game told me they're trying for a critical revision of wild west-type stories, featuring various marginalized perspectives in their cast. these cutscenes are from an indigenous character's route as she relates one of these two stories to you - the coyote and kingfisher story is a specifically okanagan oral history, and the fox and turtle are fictional, made in the style of aesop's fables (so as not to claim that they wrote a fake "native folktale"). i'll spare the spoilers, but i thought their approach was interesting and i appreciated the level of thought that went into writing for the character. also very neat to get paid to draw for a game, something i've literally always wanted to do!
they wanted me to keep it to just lineart for the sake of aesthetics and i'm sure also budget - honestly some of my favourite work to do anyway. i very frequently see people say that inking is their most dreaded part of drawing, which i generally don't really get! i love getting to be even more deliberate with my inking, knowing that it can breathe without being drowned by colour, and enhancing it with strong shadows and shapes and hatching. i could probably stand to be looser with it to lighten the toll it takes, but pure lineart illustrations feel the most satisfying for the least expenditure, personally.
i loved the diversity of animals i got to draw for here. coyotes are familiar fare, sure, but i've never drawn a kingfisher or a turtle before! i really need to find more excuses to draw particularly these belted kingfishers... their head feathers are so fun. even the fox cub was fairly new; i don't know that i've drawn a baby animal almost ever.
(leave a comment on the post itself if you want! t’oyaxsut ‘nüüsm 🧡)