Oh boy, this post is going to be interesting. I am going to be showing off the evolution of art that Fingeance has had over the past year. I want to preface this by saying I didn’t really know how to make comic book art/ ink art digitally beforehand and didn’t know how to use illustrator before starting work on this game. Also none of the current art is final so I could in theory do another one of these to show the final evolution of the art but I thought it would be interesting or at least entertaining to see how (bad) things were from before.

But enough talking time to show it. Oh boy…

Old Concept Art

In the beginning we weren’t too sure on what the art style was going to be I just knew that I wanted to have a cleaner style compared to what I have previously done.

So of course I drew something in that style anyway. It was just to get a sketch of what would become Finn, but it was just to get an idea of what the basic shape the main character would look like. So it was pretty rough and it didn’t look at all like a comic book style because we didn’t really have an art style yet. That being said, it doesn’t look bad graphically; this is largely because I drew it in a style that I was used to drawing in. But that changed when we said, “Comic book style sounds like it would fit the game!” This is when things went off the rails a bit.

Comic Book-ish (Not Really)

As I mentioned before, I didn’t have much of a background when it came to making comic book style art. Not only that but we wanted a western comic book style, which my concept art could arguably be more manga like so I tried to fix that. Key word there is “tried”.

I didn’t know how to ink things correctly so the art looked very uneven and there were weird splotches all over the place. Also the line work didn’t convey the sort of intensity I wanted; it looked more dopey then “edgy”. Not only that but the proportions were all out of whack, but I didn’t have much time because we were getting prepared for the Minnesota State Fair. This is really evident in the splash screen art, it looks way rushed, plus not having experience with this style of art didn’t do me any favors either.

Refinement

After I had some more time to figure out how to actually make the style of art things got a little better. I got a better result with inking; lines were smoother, no more splotches. But the style of art still didn’t look like I wanted it to. So I when to get some inspiration, so I went to go look at a video game. What? You thought I would look at comic book? No… that’s too obvious.

I started to get a better idea of what I wanted the game to look like and it really showed. Things started to have that “edgy” look, but not too “edgy”. When I figured out the style, I still didn’t use Adobe Illustrator so I painted things in and but some things had a bit of a roughness to them. But it really looked so much better than where the art was from before.

Enter Vectors

It was after Glitch Con where I finally purchased Illustrator and that changed production drastically. I was able to create art in the style that I wanted it in a MUCH shorter time because I was using such an inconvenient roundabout way to do things before. For comparison, it took me about 2 hours to have a polished piece of art (specifically the character art), now it takes me about 1 hour to make 3 pieces.

So that’s all of the major art shifts that the game took in terms of art and art styles. It has come a long way from when I first started making the art. I have learned a lot and hopeful the art comes across as handled well.

You also will get a chance to see the art in action firsthand this coming Monday! The demo will be released on the June 1^st make sure to check back then to play Fingenace with your friends!