Jason (the Project Lead and my partner) and I are very happy with our art development process. As I previously reported, Mr. Breno Girafa is working with us to develop several full-page art pieces for the Sassoon Files, before our Kickstarter starts. Here is a run-down of the how this cooperation is working so far.
Jason and I first wrote the Art Request Description. For “Shambler in the Den” the description was as follows:
At least 2 Chinese male gangsters – one of which wearing a black & white Chinese scholar’s uniform, (i.e. “Tang Zhuang”, think Bruce Lee in Fists of Fury;) and one of which wearing a western suit with a fedora. The “scholar” uniform gangster looks horrified. Scholar Uniform gangster can have any type of face, but should have hairstyles common to men in 1920s. He wields a mauser pistol C96. The fedora gangster looks nervous and angry. Fedora gangster should have a reasonably handsome face. Fedora gangster wields a tommy gun. If there are more gangsters, they can wield machetes. They are attacking a “Shambler From the Stars” inside a dingy, scummy opium den in Shanghai.
Ideally, this Shambler monster would have some lamprey mouths… maybe at the end of tenticles. And ideally, there would be something about the picture which shows it’s body as transparent but filled with victims blood. And / or internal organs newly visible because of the blood. This monster is not bipedal / humanoid. It is not necessary to capture the whole of the Shambler; it is possible to focus on the gangsters, catching their faces in the flash of a tommy gun. Place the Shambler in the foreground, with tentacle suckers visible, and only hint at the full monstrosity.
Truth is though, we are not committed to our artist make create exactly to this specification. We want it to look cool and authentic; we hope the description will lead to that result.
Breno takes our description and hands us 4 composition sketches.
Jason and I selected the composition we think looks most promising.
Breno refines the sketch based on our feedback. In this case, we really liked “Machine Gun Gangster” from the start, and we liked the Shambler. But we went back and forth quite a bit on the character design for the “Horrified Gangster.”
Eventually we managed to nail down the look. Well… almost.
Breno added color… which looks great. We asked him to change the characters a little bit and corrected some details on the clothing.
We are very happy with the result. I hope to share with you soon some of the other works he is creating: The Pestilent Matriarch, and the Tcho Tcho Navigator!
