Many of you this week saw this beautiful new illustration posted on our social networks. You probably don’t fully know how much time and work our artist, Viktor Kolodiazhnyi, put into this piece of art.
This is not the first time Viktor has done great work for us. Early in our partnership with him, he did an illustration that we’ve been using on our homepage until this one came along. Here’s what it looked like:
Can you figure out who the 2 characters in this scene are?
We knew we wanted a detailed illustration with which we would be able to make post cards, banners, flyers, and ads; Something that immediately communicates to people who don’t know about Omicron Protocol what this game is about. We wanted it to feature 4 of our characters front and central, and also give a glimpse of the city that is slowly falling apart. After discussing with Viktor, we decided to feature Pai, Lucky, Seeker, and Flash, partially because they would totally find themselves in this situation in our stories, and partially because Brendan and I just love these 4 characters so much.
With the concept established, Viktor went to work. Very quickly, he came up with this rough sketch to give us an idea of what he had in mind.:
Pretty much done, right? ;-)
With the character poses decided and their surroundings determined (recognize those CyMS?), we decided to talk about the details of the illustration. One thing we really wanted was Pai to use her (in)famous “Firewall” ability (thanks to her FBI-issued arm holo-computer), which allows her to temporarily stun CyMS who come too close. This is the key piece of technology that (hopefully) will get our heroes out of this mess and home safely. So Viktor came back with a rough idea of what the Firewall will look like:
The details are starting to come together!
With that established, Viktor started to add more and more details and realism, mostly focusing on the main characters. With the full color (of the characters) sketch below, we could do tweaks on specific details of the heroes’ weapons, clothing, etc…
Pretty exciting for us to see this full color version for the first time!
A few iterations later, full color added to the surroundings and CyMS. It’s starting to look like a desperate last stand for the heroes as the sun is setting, oh no!
Looking better and better!
With most of the details done, we had to figure out what the Firewall should look like. Here’s one iteration that didn’t make it.
While the firewall shape didn’t make it, Pai’s arm computer in this version made it to the final one.
And after some more tweaks with colors, sunset level, CyMS and all that, we had our final version!!!
Yay, it’s done! Or is it?
Finishing touches, a few minor tweaks, and slap on the logos, social networks, and play with the brightness, we now have the final product!
This thing is a true beauty!
So BIG THANKS to Viktor again for working with us EVERY step of the way and iterating very quickly and accurately to help us create this masterpiece! We highly recommend him for any illustration type work (but don’t use up too much of his time, we still need him all the way into 2019! =P), and go check out his other beautiful works if you get a chance!
https://www.artstation.com/viktorbright
What do you think? Anything about the process surprise you? Catch everything we changed in each step? Want Viktor to do another illustration? Just holler at us in the comments!