Hello everyone! My name is Justin Co and I am a part of the Art and Quality Assurance team for our upcoming game The Hierophant. 

In the earlier stages of development for our game, we had decided to split the making of the Tarot cards into three stages: sketching, colouring and finishing touches. Hayley was tasked with sketching the cards, I was tasked with colouring the cards and either me or Brett would do the finishing touches. Since the Tarot cards are one of the main focuses of our game, I was really happy to get the role of colouring them. We did some tests on what sort of art style we would like our game to have, which our producer and creative directors finalized. In the end, they chose our Art Lead Brett’s style who is a talented artist and has a very unique and awe-inspiring way of colouring. 

Before colouring the cards I communicate with the Narrative team to see if the cards will include any narrative elements in them. Then I communicate with another talented member of our art team, Bennet, who is the mastermind of making our cards animate and come to life. There were some communication issues in the beginning, but fortunately, we sorted it out and that just made the process a lot easier and helped improve our workflow.

The biggest challenge for me in this process was trying to get the right colours in the cards to match the theme of our game and the different variety of narrative elements related to them. We had originally wanted the cards to have a more dark and serious tone to match the setting of the game. But through trial and error me and my team agreed on making the cards a bit brighter so they stood out from the dark setting around them. And since the cards were the main focus of our game it worked out perfectly.

Right now my focus is on character design and character sprites. The art team has been working hard to get each character’s design to match their personality in-game. The harsh lesson I learned when creating art assets is the phrase our professor told us at the beginning of the project “kill your darlings,” which unfortunately has become stuck in my mind every time an idea/design has been declined. This is true for many of our ideas not just for art, and although it’s hard to accept, I believe it’s helping us improve our workflow and idea-making to push the project forward into a better state. 

Being a part of the art team and being surrounded by such talented people has taught me the importance of communication and how our project needs to progress in the right direction. Although it is still hard seeing some of my ideas and concepts turned down, I know that it’s pushing me forward to improve so that I can continue to contribute quality art assets for my team. I haven’t been doing quality assurance work yet but this week we are focusing on that entirely so our game runs smoothly. 

Everyone here in SmallFryMedia is working hard to make sure our game runs smoothly and we have something to be proud of. Art is such an important aspect within my life and I hope the art that we made will leave a positive impression on our players. Thank you for reading my blog post, feel free to support our game and we cannot wait to show it to you as a finished product!

Justin.