Concept Art Gallery

Hello all, 

I've wanted to write a post for a while to share the concept art from Snow Spire. I'll tell you my process and thoughts behind some of the visual design in this game!

When I was designing her I was looking to make a wiser researcher character, but after drawing the second sketch with the brown pigtails I decided to make her seem a bit nerdier. I thought in terms of aesthetics the first one was extremely cute though, which later inspired Eir. I didn't have the full story nailed out when I was designing this, so I was also testing different color schemes. The first one was inspired by I Love My Follower (Count)! After this, I mashed the details I liked into her final design:

Originally, I designed everyone indoors and outdoors looks, but I ran out of time to implement them. I really adore Lyra's outdoor outfit though, so maybe I'll update them in some time later.

Next I was designing Eir. I had a lot of initial trouble deciding what her character would be like, so I tried a few different vibes.

I thought that the second sketch looked cool, but I felt like the person didn't match the outfit, so I went with another round of characters to get one I liked more. This next one I focused more on a crazy witch kind of vibe.

I didn't like the first two sketches I did for this one either, but they were getting better. I looked back at my process for Lyra and noticed the one design I liked, and gave the third sketch (the middle one in this picture) the same features. When I was drawing the one with blue hair I had a sort of eureka moment to add tattoos, and if you look closely at the Spire in the game and the stone tablet they match her tattoos. I wanted it to be a visual identifier that the whole ritual thing was about her, but I think there are other obvious details that give that away. I took the dress from the second sketch and the traits from the third and mashed them into the final design:

I was having a lot of fun messing with their designs for the outside outfits.

I think I hit the nail on the head when I was doing his third sketch, which is basically what the final design is. For his indoor outfit, I was planning on throwing him into the sweater the first sketch has. I thought the second sketch was also very cool, but it didn't fit his personality as well as I would have hoped. Since I had Lyra and Eir planned out at this point, I also made sure his color scheme matched theirs. After this I had a pretty solid color scheme idea for the full game, which is why the final sprites and backgrounds all use a lot of blue and purple.

He is a researcher as well, so I wanted him to look dignified. When I was writing him I planned out for him to be a deity too actually! I imagine he has similar marks to Eir underneath his clothes, and that's why he's fully covered up. I wanted there to be a reason why he knew so much about the rituals, I think I added a single line that hinted at it, but I don't expect many people made the connection. Flicker is meant to be a sort of familiar for him, which is why he also trusts her with a lot. While speaking of Flicker, I did not draw any concept art for her because of the time crunch and my disdain for drawing animals. I had a plan for her to transform between a human-like form and her animal form but that idea was cut early. 

Originally the house was going to be a small village with a bunch of other characters, but I decided I needed to scope down so the project could finish on time.  The "Spire" was originally going to be the tower part of the house, but that was changed! I had the snow field with the obelisks in it to have a sort of researching scene with Lyra and Faron, so that they could puzzle together the ritual but I thought the puzzle part would be too obvious and agonizing to read so I changed most of the scenes to focus more on building relationships with the characters. 

I liked the room layout I made but I was very disappointed in my ability to draw interiors. In the end, I made a few 3D models and traced them to make the backgrounds in the game.

The last picture is actually what the spire would have originally looked like, it was a sort of isle of obelisks leading up to a larger one. I thought it would be cool to have the main menu look like it was engraved into one of the obelisks but I changed it to a simpler one so I could focus more on designing other areas of the game. 

And finally, when I was making the sprites I had trouble deciding what they should look like, so here are the first two Eir outtakes!

I decided to start over after both of these because I thought the poses weren't dynamic enough and the anatomy could have been improved. I was a lot more mindful making the other sprites because I didn't want to keep restarting. 

I am satisfied with how the game turned out but I feel I was heavily limited by my time crunch. If you're just cracking into making games yourself, I advise you not to start like I did: give yourself time! If you think you won't stick to a game if it isn't under a time limit, I recommend going for jams that are longer than a month, or finding a team to spread the load. 

Thank you for reading!