Hello! My name is Julia. I work as an artist in the company AYGames. Right now I’m working on the project named “Deck of Ashes”. So, I’ll tell a little about myself and about the process of creating art for the game.


I always wanted to be an illustrator, so I received a classical art education. Like any academic artist, I was taught to love details, anatomy, and the study of volume in the subject. In this project, all this knowledge was very useful to me.


I worked on the background of the camp, its characters, game locations, mobs and map illustrations.


In a very beginning, we had to find our unique style and the correct way to show the atmosphere. Our game is about the dark, cursed Middle Ages, this meant that art must be full of all sorts of monsters from ancient legends, dark forests with crooked trees, fetid swamps, ravaged villages. All our team was very enthusiastic about it because we had a lot of opportunities to create something great. It was obvious to us that the monsters must be especially vile and bloodthirsty. We drew a bunch of sketches and it was a very fun process, because, despite all its bloodthirstiness, our monsters are definitely stylized and it is really interesting to look at them. I love to invent all sorts of fantastic creatures, to develop their design, to fill their images with characteristic elements. Each monster must have its own characteristics, which from a visual point of view is expressed in the difference of silhouette, color content, the character of attack. Among all these creatures, I even have my favorites. And the "cherry on the cake" was the opportunity for me to animate our mobs. This is a separate and very interesting process through which you can reveal the character even better.


In the development of backgrounds, we also tried to convey the oppressive atmosphere we needed and, in the necessary proportion, to stylize and simplify them. At this stage, the knowledge gained from the academy about heat and cold and aerial perspective was also very useful to me. Background development is a laborious process, it requires intense concentration of attention. It is necessary to divide them the features of game backgrounds into three clear plans. In the foreground are the characters, the second sets the environment, the distant one - unites everything into a whole picture. It is important not to break down these plans too deliberately because the liveliness of the entire composition can disappear. You should also try to draw on different layers at once because this greatly simplifies the subsequent work. In the future, of the chopped backgrounds, you can make options for new locations. It simplifies and speeds up development.


I also worked on illustrations of maps. It was decided to stylize art under linocut because this technique suites greatly to the Middle Ages. We focused on the contour, clear lines and characteristic strokes of this printing technique. As a result, the cards are well read, their essence is not lost, and, I think, the choice of such graphics greatly contributed to this.





In general, on this project, I constantly solve interesting problems, pump my skills and I really hope that you will enjoy our game and you will appreciate our efforts!