Spicy Horse are situated in Shanghai where a team of 70 have been working on the project for the past 2 years. Ken explained how the difficulty of creating a game of this style is that in the east it is not common place and tends to take artists completely out of their comfort zones. the following are important aspects of the design Ken sought after:
- Victorian/Gothic
- Visual Motif
- Steampunk
- Alchemy
- Theme
- Tone
- Colour Use
- Rendering Style
The characters, props, costume, architecture and environments all required heavy research and reference. The goal was to achieve a unique and dark universe. with influence from Mark Ryden of Brothers Quay as an example and Zdzislaw Beksinki's works. Ken's "Dark" needed to have
- Corruption of Innocence
- the Edge of Ridiculous
- Abuse of Power
- Uncomfortable use of colour
- the Dark side of sex
- Impairment of senses
All of the outlined factors that contributed to the world of "Alice" are brilliant inspiration for my personal projects and I'm sure for many others so I hope this can help. The lessons learnt during this talk were that Painting and Design are different and brainstorming is vital for strong development of ideas. I need to put more story and function into my drawings and show depth. Frequent sketching is incredibly important to the strength of a drawing and Ken himself only moves a drawing into the concept art stage after 5 or 6 attempts in sketch form.
I am currently working on a selection of concept works for a group project so this talk by Ken was really helpful. Its a great buzz to see how a simple drawing can change entirely when studios like Spicy Horse move them into colour.
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