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.

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.

If you’ve played through Warnings at Waverly Academy and never saw this can of paint in the celler environment, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Here’s the closest shot of it you get in the game:

Guess I got a little carried away when my 3-D partner requested a simple paint label that will just be in the background.

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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.

What you see above is the fruits of my icy labor. Well, a smaller version of the fruits, at least. OKAY, smaller, and with a couple of additional buildings that were removed from the final version of the game (namely, the lighthouse in the northwest and the water tower up top there).

To get a better sense of how much larger the map is in game, here are some full resolution screenshots:

I swear, I had Jimmy Buffet songs stuck in my head for months after this project was completed.

Remember, you can always follow me on Twitter!

ALSO: I just opened an Etsy Shop! Check it out and maybe buy something nice for that special someone/thing.

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

As you probably already know, I’ve been employed at Her Interactive for the past couple of years, working as a 2-D artist on the Nancy Drew series of PC adventure games. In previous posts (found here, here, here and here), I’ve shared some of the game art I created for the first title I worked on, The Haunting of Castle Malloy. However, I haven’t posted any art from the games that have been released since Malloy, and if you can believe it there have been FOUR.

So, I’m starting a new segment here on the blog dedicated to showcasing what I’ve been doing for eight hours a day for two years. Every Tuesday, I’ll post a new piece of art from one of my old games.  Should be a hoot!

And I should mention right off the bat that, if any readers have found this site looking for game info, THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD! Proceed at your own peril!

Today’s art is from the 20^th Nancy Drew PC game called Ransom of the Seven Ships. But you had to be pretty smart to discover it – the image appeared on a special Easter egg that only the most resourceful and cheating players could find:

Captain Whiskers of the Spanish Armada, here to pilfer your booty and your heart! He actually the first of several behatted cats I’ve put into the games. I just can’t get enough of cats in novelty headwear. My own cat refuses to wear the bonnet I knitted him, and I suppose this is how I cope with my bottomless disappointment.

Okay! See you next week!

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

And then there are times I have to create realistic documents that include no real information whatsoever, documents that are basically set dressing. They still require all the elements you’d expects on an important document, but most of the time you won’t ever be able to clearly read the document’s text. Heck, you probably can’t even see the images on them while you play the game.

Anyway, since these kind of assets tend to be sorta boring to create, I try to entertain myself while I put them together by writing extremely absurd things in the places you’d normally find something useful. And since this is my blog, and these gems of wit (ahem) would otherwise go unread, I decided to post them here. Enjoy as best you can.

Oh, and this’ll be the last post I’ll do about my work on Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy, so if you want to check out any more of my work on the game, BUY IT.

All the images in this post, © Copyright Her Interactive, Inc.

I went into designing the images with one goal: make them look as much as possible like they came out of Highlights. And I think I hit it dead on, toot toot toot. In retrospect, however, the Spot the Differences in Highlights looked terrible. I probably should’ve picked a better goal.

Anyway, here’re four of the better-looking images. Guess the 12 differences in each images correctly and I’ll send you cat litter (used).

All the images in this post, © Copyright Her Interactive, Inc.

For example, the pub environment I talked about last post needed art for the pull tabs in the serving bar. Easy enough, I just needed to create convincing, root beer label-style art for the different products:

Folksy and cartoonish, no problem. However, another environment called for old photographs of a character’s family members. Since, for legal reasons, we can’t just snag a photo from the Internet and throw that in the game, I had to draw photo-realistic images from scratch:

Spooky, eh? This was obviously a bit more difficult than the pull tabs, but I welcomed the opportunity to stretch my skills beyond my artistic comfort zone. And that’s the best part of this aspect of my job, getting experience in styles I never would have considered working in before.

All the images in this post, © Copyright Her Interactive, Inc.

The above image is from Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy. It’s an exterior shot of the pub where Nancy interrogates a suspicious groundskeeper on the whereabouts of a missing yada yada yada, look I’m not too clear on the plot since the games are PC-exclusive and I’m a Mac user. Right, I can’t even play my own games. The important thing to notice, though, is the pub itself. Like in many first person adventure titles (think Myst), the environments are created by first rendering the elements in a 3-D modeling program. This produces a grey, featureless mass that nonetheless has the basic shape of the object and can react to light and perspective like a normal object in the real world. Next, 2-D texture art is created in Photoshop and applied to the 3-D model to complete the illusion of, in this case, a craggy and moldering 403-year-old pub. Each element of the environment usually requires a separate 3-D model, which in turn requires me to make all manner of 2-D art, such as this texture I created for the pub’s sign:

Here’s another example of the same process. I create a 2-D texture, like this dartboard:

The texture is then applied to a 3-D model, creating the illusion of an actual, three-dimensional dartboard:

All that you see in and outside the pub was rendered out by a 3-D artist before being basically drawn on by me: the tables, the walls, the floors, even the windows. Everything needs a texture. And that’s what I do.

You can see more shots of the pub environment in this IGN review of the game.

All the images in this post, © Copyright Her Interactive, Inc.

In the meantime, I so far only have a handful of submissions to my Monday Sketcharoo contest, and I know I’ve got more punster friends then that. Remember, the rules have changed! Now either a correct answer or a REALLY CLEVER pun will take the grand prize: your handsome/beautiful/monstrous portrait drawn with my very own, carpal tunnel-crippled hands (a $100 value, yours FREE!). The contest ends October 20th, or whenever I get the correct answer. So, act now! NOW! ACT!