Games Art and Design: Interactive Narrative

Early design of Flints plane based on the Russian I-16

First sketch

We have been assigned a project in which we are to make an interactive narrative of some sort. My first idea was to make a comic, since I always wanted to make a comic. And the interactivity part will be some sort of a bonus. After a lot of initial ideas, raging from, dragons, airships, submarines, underwater exploration, scifi, planes. I decided to go with what i like drawing the most. Planes, because since it will be a comic, and i will be working on it for some time, I might as well enjoy it. The hardest part was coming up with a decent story. I knew i couldn't go too complicated. Since if I branched out with choices too much it would turn into a giant cluster ball of death. and that would not be nice. So i definitely wanted to go simple.

loosely based on the WW2 J7W Japanese prototype

I knew my art style, I knew the basic setting, but I still had no idea about the narrative. So i decided to do what i usually do, and it works....sometimes...IMPROVISE.


Flint shows locke his found artefact

I started with a concept sketch i had from the beginning of this project. It was to be the main characters plane. Ok so i had a main character idea. A pilot. An adventurer? possibly so i worked on my concept plane and turned it into an illustration. I was quite happy with the colors and overall look so I decided to go with it and add some panels. so, there a story started to unfold. A pilot approaching a ship. Is it his ship? what ship is it? what is he doing there? I just decided to go with it and improvise, make up all these questions as i go with the next panels.

Here are some early panels with no text, many of these changed later on

I was heavily inspired by the old game Crimson Skies, my all time favorite game.

Since I dont read comics that much I was not really inspired by any,so I took inspiration from other sources like my favorite artists
Jake Parker for example who uses very simple shapes in his vehicular designs. and very stylized technology. His art style can be most seen in my airship design. Basically I wanted to have fun with this project. Try out a slightly different style. Polish up my rendering technique. And finnaly make a comic, which I have always wanted to do. It is much more difficult than I thought. The process of coming up with a decent narrative was the hardest so far. It is clearly not my strong part. But in the end I think did pretty good. If there is one thing I have learned from this project. It is to go with the first idea that pops up in your head. I wasted so much time just thinking up different ideas and plots. But noone of them really worked so in the end i went with the first one i had.