I want to share my process making illustration art for the Indie Real Time Strategy game, Furs of Fury. Working on this illustration pushed my skills to it’s furthest because this game needed this treatment! I initially completed the art in December, but I finally got the time to make a process post and video of this illustration.
The programs I use to create most of my art these days is Clip Studio Paint. Most of the sketching and painting is done in it. I worked on this illustration on and off for roughly 5 months in 20202 over several sessions of Art Streams, weekdays, weeknights and weekends. With this time-lapse, I managed to edit it down to over 20 minutes.
When preparing to tackle this project, I chatted frequently with Andy Domain, the programmer and creator of the game about the direction of the illustration. Furs of Fury art direction is reminiscent of animal fiction like Redwall and Mouse Guard, so Andy sought me out since I like drawing anthropomorphic animal characters.
I wanted to challenge myself as an artist and push for a more painted style like the covers of Redwall. It was rough, I’ll admit, as I was worried this piece was taking too long compared to other artists who made similar artwork.
Thumbnails
The preliminary thumbnails are to figure out the broad composition of the illustration. The overall goal is to make this illustration fit within Steam’s Graphic Asset Requirements. Not only to fit into digital image requirements, but to also be able to print physical items such as shirts or posters.
Reference hunting is a chief in my task list, as many pro artists use references to build the best looking work. Thanks to PureRef, I can have all of my image in one spot, so I can simply glance at the area and do my drawing.
Refined Sketches
I pick one of the thumbnails to begin refining into a larger sketch. Staying loose with the composition and focusing on the action is best done in the sketch phase, as you’ll have the building blocks for the later phases as you go.
I had free rein on the actual designs of the characters, and I wasn’t beholden to the in-game 3D models. I’m happiest about designing the Honey Badger’s Honey Comb pouches and the Rabbit’s Carrot Armor.
Line Art and Flat Colors
I still had my comic artist mindset when working on the line art and flat colors. The tools I used are a modified Ink Brush from the Frenden Clip Studio Brushes, aliased Lasso Tool, and Round Brush to nail down color locations.
Looking back, I could’ve got away with coloring on my pencil art because it’s clean enough to work with and again, this isn’t a comic that needs to copy and reprint. I supposed since I’m still new to a painting workflow, I stayed away from just leaving my pencils alone.
Rendering
Rendering, even simple cel-shading is the most boring and tedious part of my art process. It’s made worse by the fact that I’ve been flying blind and don’t know as many techniques as I’d like for proper rendering of textures. At best, I know about lighting and shading, but beyond that I’d draw a blank, so I had a harder time of it.
The initial sentry flowers that defended the crystal were Venus Flytrap but, I didn’t like that the colors blended so much with the background and there was already flytraps in the foreground and I wanted to add some more of a line between the “bad guy” plants and the “good guy” plants.
The entire comp would still be needed to have room for the Logo of the game. Maybe if I worked on the thumbnails more, I wouldn’t have that problem. But maybe I’m still being a perfectionist about it.
I did leave as much room for the Crystal that the Animals needed to protect. There were many phases of rendering the Crystal and figure out how to make it glow enough. The glowing was too much at first, but I fiddled with the opacity and Soft Brushes to make a good enough effect for the Crystal.
Last Detailing
The home stretch was a long one. I added more details to represent the game more, such as more Wasps, actual firing shots and explosions because I wanted to push the excitement of this piece more. It’s tough to stop at a point in the illustration where you can actually let go of the piece and stop perfecting it. I had a standard I wanted to rise to, and I did everything I could to get to it.
At the end of everything, I think I’ve made massive mistakes but massive strides. If I want to get more confident making paintings, I should work on more paintings and illustrations more often. I have a good track record for jumping on challenges that take forever to get right!