-Bernard “Beardo” Nickels, Head Guru, Beardo’s Bounty

INGREDIENTS: Organic tofu, organic patchouli marinade (pine bark shavings, humanely harvested bear sweat, words of healing, incense ash, faerie tears), organic baby bok choy, organic sullen teenage bok choy, moonbeams, eight hour guitar solo, Lucy-procured sky diamonds.

Also Available: Curried Soy Chunks, Tempeh Wads in Saffron Sauce.

BE SURE TO CHECK OUT OUR DELICIOUS CEREALS!

In the 13th Century, Genghis Khan led an unstoppable army through Eurasia, conquering all in his path, driven by one burning desire: to discover the world’s greatest soup! Now, BROTH of KHAN invites you to lead your horde into the realms of deliciousness with our mouth-watering selection of hardy soups. Take just one bite and you’ll agree, it’s a soup fit for a KHAN!

INGREDIENTS: Entrails, falcon mutes, the tears of lamentation from the eyes of all enemies of the great khan, corn syrup.

Also Available: Airag Gumbo, Muttonsnout Stew.

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter and Etsy!

All the images in this post (except the header), © Copyright Her Interactive, Inc.

Excuse the hiatus – one of the difficulties of being a professional video game artist is that by the end of the work day my creative energies get a bit zapped. This is especially true when what I’m doing at work is especially creatively challenging and/or fulfilling. Though I’ve recently finished a project that was both, I can’t show it to you for a few months (another difficulty with being a professional video game artist).

What I can start to show you is the work I did on the recently released (like, today) 22nd installment in the ever-expanding casefiles of one Miss Nancy Drew, entitled Trail of the Twister. One of my environments in this game was a Oklahoman Mom and Pop store called – wait for it – Ma and Pa’s. That’s right, I was entirely responsible for coming up with enough product art to fill an entire convenience store.

So, over the next few weeks I’ll be inundating you with products that don’t actually exist, but definitely definitely should. Like this totally edible-looking cereal:

I don’t know about you, but my mouth is watering just thinking about that delicious homunculus!

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter and Etsy!

All the images in this post (except the header), © Copyright Her Interactive, Inc.

A few of my loyal readers have shown interest in a behind-the-scenes look at how the environments are created, from sketch to the finished product. While I’ve handled this a bit in previous posts, let me take you through the process step-by-step, focusing on a single object in the cellar environment from Warnings at Waverly Academy: the furnace.

The cellar furnace played a dual role in the game – it not only had to add to the spooky atmosphere we were trying to create, it also was the scene of one of the game’s puzzles. This meant I had to design a furnace with a lot of character that also had specific features (ten valves) that could be seen on a single game screen (so the player could solve it without navigating away). Sorta tricky.

After studying a LOT of reference photos of old, rusty furnaces, this is what I came up with: 

If you squint really hard you can make out a skull shape to it. Squint harder.

I sent this to my 3-D partner (in this case the talented Josh Crandall), who created a model of the object (in yellow, below) and unwrapped its separate elements:

Next, I took the unwrapped file into Photoshop and created a 2-D texture for my 3-D partner to put on top of his model. In this case, since the furnace was supposedly constructed out of the same metal, the resulting texture ended up looking like a big rectangle of rust with some shaded bits here and there:

Doesn’t look like much, right? But put it in the game environment, add some environmental effects, and viola: big, spooky, puzzling furnace:

Ta-da!

And now I’ve got just a touch of bad news. I’m running out of interesting things to show you from games that have already been released, and I can’t show you art from games that have yet to be released. So, until the next game is out, the Drewsday posts will be a bit more sporadic. However, once the new game is released I’ll have just a TON of fun stuff to show you guys, so watch for that around… er… July? I think?

Anyway, Cheers!

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter and Etsy!

All the images in this post (except the header), © Copyright Her Interactive, Inc.

In the tropical adventure Ransom of the Seven Ships, Nancy free climbs a mountain perforated with bat-filled caves while being bombarded with coconuts flung by monkeys at the summit. Intense, I know. The mountain is only ever seen as a 2-D background upon which our heroine clambers, but the caves and obstacles Nancy encounters needed to be worked out on paper beforehand.

Next, I had to imagine that 3-D mountain environment was spread out on flat surface, and work using a mix of textures and painting in order to carve out the nooks and crannies Nancy would have to traverse to get to the top.

The actual size of the mountain, in game, is 3072 pixels wide by 1540 pixels high (42 by 21 inches printed out, or about 6 times the size it appears above). It took a long time. A really long time.

Here’s how the players see it in game.

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter and Etsy!

All the images in this post (except the header), © Copyright Her Interactive, Inc.

I can’t help but think I’m somehow responsible.

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter and Etsy!

All the images in this post (except the header), © Copyright Her Interactive, Inc.

The image above, the illustration I did for the Midwest, was the only one I completed. It depicts a White-tail Deer (Illinois’s state animal), and a couple of Monarch Butterflies (Illinois state insect),  with the Cahokia Mounds behind them (an Illinois state historic site). It’s nice, but honestly it’s one of the weaker illustration I came up with. Maybe one day I’ll finish the rest of them and let you see’em.

Until then, Lost is back on SO I GOTTA GO K BYE.

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter and Etsy!

All the images in this post (except the header), © Copyright Her Interactive, Inc.

Did I mention I love my job?

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter and Etsy!

All the images in this post (except the header), © Copyright Her Interactive, Inc.

Locked in the crypt of El Toro, the air around her oppressive, heavy, Nancy must gather her wits, examine her surroundings and… hey, is that El Toro there in that portrait?!

Good-lookin’ guy! Kind of a girlie hairdo, but whateryagonnado?

This was one of my first complete digital paintings. I layered on the textures pretty heavy hoping they would cover up any awkwardness, made a few mistakes here and there, but figured the sheer manliness El Toro exudes would cover over a multitude of ineptitudes.

DANG but he is handsome.

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter and Etsy!

All the images in this post (except the header), © Copyright Her Interactive, Inc.