The first concept art for the game “aggressive bystander”. Before I begun working on the image I sketched on a lot of different constellations on the theme of the game. The theme is in short terms, an old guy caught in the middle of a riot. He is equally pissed off at all sides of the riot, both police and protestors. So he starts to take out all of his frustration on everything within reach. He is basically fed up with the way people are messing about.

I wanted the setup for the image to say all of this at once, because this is most likely the first thing the player or producer would see from the game. I wanted to present the setting of the game, which is a typical big city. I also wanted to present the big riot, and the player’s position in this conflict. So I placed the enemies, police and protestors, in opposite corners of the screen and the main character in the middle in a defiant pose. I made the police and protestors smaller and further back in the image, so that through perspective they would build a sort of pyramid to center the protagonist. Instead of drawing out a bunch of high detailed police and protestors, I choose to draw the focus to the ones closest to the “camera”. In that way I could save a lot of time and effort, while at the same time create more depth in the image. I also think that it perhaps gives more space to present the two sides clearly.

I wanted everything in the image to center in on the main character. At first I placed him in the middle as just a black silluette against the background. But when I tried it out with colors and giving it a core shadow and a bit of highlight, it kind of gave it a feeling of the old man being on stage in the spotlight. I found that to be a good effect for the plot of the game, so I enhanced it by putting the main source of light behind his silluette.

My workflow when drawing is mostly doodling on lose ideas about a concept. The deeper meanings I often find halfway in. But when I find them I make sure to enhance the effect they give.  It is probably better to have a crystal clear concept in the planning stage about the exact effects you want to use in the image and all, but I’m not quite there yet. But I’m learning!