The Art of Crux

Although the playtest wrapped up, the work still continues! 

When I first started working on this game, I decided wanted to create as much of the art for the game as I could. Digital illustration is not something I have a lot of experience in, or any kind of drawing really, so I took this as an opportunity to challenge myself and try to improve my skills

I started with making simple shapes and connecting them together to build out the form I wanted. Then added another layer with the same process to do the shading. This worked pretty well for background elements but I really struggled trying to draw figures. This website filled with pose references was a huge help! I think out of everything, trying to get this character to look right took me the longest

I've used this paper cut tutorial to make a few illustrations, like this one for Hollow Knight, and really enjoyed the look. So I applied that for almost all the details in this game. Love how it turned out!

The "Falling" and "Rest"  pages will be in the final version of the game, and they might be my favorite. Not sure how I managed to make it feel like the character is actually falling, but it works! Once that one was done, I knew I had to follow it with something calm to balance things out. The little bird sleeping on the character's head made me smile so much.

Overall, I'm very glad I had the time to work on all this. Crux has quickly become the game that I've put most of myself into, and I think these illustrations highlight that. The pieces aren't perfect, but it's my art