Hackberry Hollow

Glen had a lot of fun with four straight weeks of ego stroking, so I thought I would keep him on his toes a bit by posting some of the work that I’ve been doing.

One of the main artistic goals in Hackberry Hollow is to have intricately detailed environments, but because we want to keep a strict production schedule we needed to come up with an effective workflow that would save us time without sacrificing quality. When we started doing concept art we realized very quickly that we were spending more time tweaking the underlying drawings than we were actually painting, and with three skilled modelers on our team it quickly became apparent that creating relatively detailed backgrounds complete with lighting would allow us to streamline production without sacrificing the nice painted look that we like.

Glen already revealed this part of our process, but what he posted so far has been experiments with the concept of using 3D mock-ups. Thus far we are very pleased with the results, so I set out to make one of the actual set pieces that will be used to create the final art in the comic. Seeing what we could do with quick 3D mock-ups for our concept art, imagine if you will what could be done with this:

This past Friday we had yet another exhilarating writing session for the comic. That’s right. Adam came up with a really neat idea. Previously the plan has been to only have glowing red or green eyes to differentiate between ghouls and undead. Now, what if these creatures had a visible but ghostly muscle structure as well? Not only would that look wicked sick, but it would help illustrate how the magic system works. But most importantly it worked like magical caulking to help us fix a potentially big plot hole in the story.

One of the design ghoals [sic] for our ghouls [hyuk hyuk] was to somehow show how the magic system works without having to explain it. The characters in the story do some very clever things within the restrictions of the magic system, and we want it to be believable and very rewarding for the audience to read as they share in the character’s cleverness. To do that, we believe that the audience should be able to figure out how the magic system works on their own without hearing scads of exposition by a secondary character explaining what the heck just happened—just like in anime. ^_^

Anyway. Enough pontification. Here’s a few images showing how the new undead and ghouls may look like in the dark. Spooky!

Did you know that there’s a 3D model hidden beneath most of the concept art we’ve done so far? Using 3D tools has helped us out a lot in creating concept art, and our plan is to use it extensively in the comic.

We are departing from our usual backstory concept art this week. Typically when we do environmental concept art we make it in full color so we can figure out the general mood for the environment, but in the case of Preston’s cabin we wanted to make sure that we develop something iconic. When designing the main character’s home we decided that the structure of the building should be figured out before the color, lighting, and the surrounding environment.

Ah. Another peaceful day in Hackberry Hollow where the critters will happily greet anyone that passes by—well, the undead critters anyway. Yes sirree. Say howdy to this squirrel and he’ll howdy back.

Of course, this is how Hackberry Hollow looked before it hit the fan.

What we have here is a scene from the forest surrounding Hackberry Hollow. Seeing ghosts in the forest and in town was an everyday event when Hackberry Hollow was still in its prime twenty years before the story starts. It was not uncommon for one to be used as a guide directing authorized visitors to secret locations, misdirecting or attacking those who aren’t, or to fulfill any number of tasks for the necromancers that created them.

Whenever I do concept art I try to put some kind of visual narrative that hints at the story, or in this particular case the backstory. For this image I could have simply done a vignette of the two just standing there because the fighter design is all we wanted to focus on, but I went ahead and pictured them in the middle of battle with a onlooking crowd because it gives the two fighters context and a better visual narrative of the story which may inspire us with new ideas. Story influences art, art influences story, and it’s harder for the art to influence the story if I painted the characters standing there doing nothing.

I reckon it’s time to start hucking out some art for you all. As we develop the art direction and final designs for Hackberry Hollow we’ll be posting concept art for the different environments, objects, and eventually character designs. Our plan is to post something for you to see on the blog once a week, so we’ll keep good on our commitment.

With the advent of the new Hackberry Hollow site I created a logo and illustration that can be used for the website and other marketing materials like our impromptu business cards. And of course I had to turn it into a desktop background so I could ogle it all day. So to kick off the site launch here’s the first batch of Hackberry Hollow desktop backgrounds—for those of you who really want it.

Hackberry Hollow is an upcoming comic being produced by the guys at Lumaglyph. We strongly believe that story is king and that anything serialized like shows and comics with a continuous story should be written in advance from beginning to end: thoroughly researched, well thought out, and absolutely no filler.

Hackberry Hollow is nearing completion of the writing phase and we are starting to develop the art direction for the comic. We launched the site to share concept art, to hear what people think, and to stay in contact with those who are already interested in the work we are doing.

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