dubzywubzyubzy asked: ah yes its past wednesday but hopefully you're still doing worldbuilding... Is there any architectural direction the city would be taking? I know you're drawing inspiration from boston but is there anything in particular? There is a tone of brutalist architecture there, three, four Paul Rudolph buildings, and many look alikes, and of course there's the old neo-renaissance and romanesque presence. Is there any real overlying area of the city you're drawing inspiration from?

i am still taking questions because as far as i’m concerned, it’s still wednesday until i go to sleep

There isn’t really any one style I’m applying to the whole city. I really want to keep the city feeling as diverse and alive as a real city, but there’s a chance that most of the game will take place in residential and downtown areas - lots of brownstones and high rises, mostly because that’s really what I like to look at. I don’t really know, though; until I get into the meat of actually putting the game together, I can’t really make any decisions on how open vs. how confined the world will be. I’d like to have a hugely open city to move around, but it’s definitely likely that I’ll have to scale it back a bit (then again, it’s not like I have any kind of deadline, so WHO KNOWS).

allesandersen:

Alois Kalvoda (1875 - 1934): Skupina olší / A Group of Alders.

Oil, 1897.

Anonymous asked: what sort of things does Thomas see in his hallucinations, is there anything specific or reoccurring?

That’s one of the things I’m focusing on right now - trying to come up with good monster designs, since it isn’t something I’ve ever really tried before, and it’s even harder with the knowledge that it has to stay spooky when rendered in a sort of cartoony, low poly style. As the hallucinations deepen, I want the monsters to gradually get more obviously monstery - I don’t want them to start out as these hulking, horrific beasts with like a million tentacles and ten mouths and stuff. I want them to start out as humanoid creatures - people without faces, with extra limbs or missing limbs, obvious deformation, and non-humanoid mannerisms and movements, before they devolve into more grotesque creatures.

The first one in particular is a theme I want to stay constant throughout every creature I design, since I think it really emphasizes Thomas’ fear of isolation and being unable to connect with other people. I’m also thinking about temperature as a key component - his story starts in the summer, but I don’t think it’ll stay hot outside for that long. Fear of the unknown is a big thing too - I want to keep a lot of the enemies hidden in shadows so you never really know what you’re up against (wow big surprise there). A lot of this is stuff I’m drawing from my own fears, too.

I think that, at the beginning at least, his hallucinations are not accompanied by a change in environment. I made this decision while I was watching a Silent Hill playthrough a few days ago - Silent Hill is scary while I’m playing it or watching someone play it, but as soon as I turn the TV/video off, it stops being scary. I don’t live in a Silent Hill-ish place, and without the accompanying environment it doesn’t really scare me anymore. Imagining any of those signature monsters outside is more comedic than scary (not to knock on Silent Hill at all. It’s awesome).

By keeping the city constant, with or without the creatures, I think it keeps the horror lasting outside of the game - if you went to some other dimension when things started going bad, then you associate the creatures with that other place, and they don’t really linger unless you somehow manage to access an alternate dimension IRL. Keeping them grounded in reality makes reality a little scarier, which makes the game a little scarier. I think that as things progress in the story that could change, but that’s A MYSTERY

Anonymous asked: what type of world does thomas live in? go really in depth

Universally similar to ours, but with animal people instead of humans, because drawing people is boring!!! Seriously though, as far as the scope of his world is concerned, it’s very much a present day, present time feeling. With the notable exception that there are unspeakable eldritch horrors and stuff, but to be honest, I can’t really say for certain that the same thing isn’t waiting for us a few solar systems over.

The city he lives in (because he does live in a city) is an ambiguously North American metropolis - I’m basing it heavily on Boston, since I really love Boston and it makes for great reference, but it isn’t a city that directly corresponds to one in our world (I haven’t named it yet, but it’s going to be one of those stereotypical city names like Brookville or Slatetown or something like that). It has a port, it has transit systems, it has convention centers, and good, bad, and ugly parts of town. The city is pretty happy. Good stuff happens, bad stuff happens, but at the outset of Thomas’ story, it is essentially like most other cities, and there isn’t any one mood coloring the world. Things change as people start to disappear and die and stuff, but the city on the whole is normal.

We don’t really see a lot of that, though. Because Thomas has a night job and has a lot of issues with going out during the day, we usually see the city late at night, when it is very lonely, very empty, and a little spooky. Isolation is a prevalent theme in his story, and I want to maintain that through the gameplay. The city is, again, still just a city, but we never really see it that way.

The town he grew up in, on the other hand, is largely rural and mostly peaceful. We constantly see it in a state of sunset, near the end of the school year and during the summer. While it’s still very empty, it’s also a warm place, and never feels isolated. I’m basing it very heavily on the rural areas in the upper part of New York (the state) - most of my extended family lives in the area, and my childhood is filled with really great summers there in the past.

Those two areas are the only important ones in his story. We never leave either of them during gameplay.

Anonymous asked: what oc's do you have and what are their personalities?

ATM I pretty much have only two oc’s of note. The first is my as-of-yet unnamed cat lady who I use as the avatar for my Kid Relapse releases; she’s the closest thing I have to a fursona and so her personality is basically me, which means she’s not really suited to writing stories for. I’ve had a few ideas involving her, but nothing I’ve started on.

My other main OC is Thomas who is pretty new and who i’ve posted pics of twice before. He’s a rabbit guy who I’m developing as the protag for a game I’m planning. I like to think that (as he is in the present) he’s sociable enough, but is tired almost all the time so he isn’t really that friendly. Mostly he’s just apathetic about a lot of stuff. His ‘hallucinations’ keep on edge, but he’s stuck in a complete dead-end job and his nocturnal schedule means he’s alone a lot.

I don’t really have any other OCs. I had a few last summer-ish but I pretty much stopped drawing during my freshman year at college so I’ve forgotten/abandoned most of them (though I really should redraw/design a few of the cooler ones).

Let's do some worldbuilding

dissonancies:

prediction for the next gunnerkrigg update

coffeekhan:

spacesharkcomic:

/v/ takes the Xbox One reveal reaaaaaally well.

Worthy of a reblog

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