Behind the Scenes: Adversarial Archetypes Art Process

Hey there, Horizoneers! We have a special guest post today from one of our amazing artists, who illustrated "Adversarial Archetypes" in Horizons 2!

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Hello! I’m Brandi York, an artist who has always held a love for all geeky and all things Art Nouveau. I was privileged to be asked to illustrate the new Candela Obscura archetypes in Horizons.

Today, I wanted to take you all through a bit of my process in taking descriptions from a client and putting proverbial pen to paper. I say proverbial as I tend to work digitally these days, as my two studio su-purr-visors will literally get into everything. (And I have the blue watercolor paw prints on a recent piece to prove it.)

After receiving the initial concepts, I started to dig through the internet for reference materials: clothing of the period, and any other odds and ends, like the car in the Tycoon, and the lab equipment in the Unfettered’s portrait. 

With references procured, I sat down to hash out some rough sketches. My initial sketches are always a hot mess, so I usually try to clean things up before sending them to clients. Below are the initial sketches for all three Candela Obscura archetypes: the Tycoon, Street Tough, and Unfettered.

 You can see here that from the rough sketches to cleaned-up sketches, things changed a bit. More changes came once line work and color came into play. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

With rough sketches submitted and tweaks made, I start in on the full line work. Art Nouveau is fluid and very line-heavy, so I use a solid brush and a variety of brush sizes to create the varied line weights and fluidity. I also use a Photoshop plugin that I’ve been using for years called Lazy Nezumi. While it has all sorts of amazing functions, I primarily use it for one feature called the Pulled String, which stabilizes my brush and gives me long, smooth lines for those big sweeping curves found in Art Nouveau. I started using this before Photoshop had a native stabilization tool that helps smooth my lines out, and has become integral to my art nouveau work.

I tend to start with the face, as that’s usually the biggest focal point of a piece.

 I utilize a feature in Photoshop that allows me to add a second window of the piece I’m working on, so I can see the whole thing at once, rather than zooming in and out constantly as I work to make sure the whole piece is working. It’s super handy, especially when I get to color.

Once I finish the line work, I like to set it aside for a day, to come back and see if anything needs to be adjusted.

 As you may have noticed, the Street Tough and the Unfettered get a few big changes from the line work to the final images, namely the Street Tough’s frame, the ghostly figure behind the Unfettered and some aspects of the lab equipment. The great thing about working digitally is the flexibility to make changes on the fly.

Once color begins, some minor tweaking will happen to the line work as I find things that don’t read quite right with the color, or need adjustment to fix sizing, placement, etc. 

You can see how I handle my color in this sped-up video of the color process on the Street Tough.

I have a particular color palette I’ve developed over the years for my Art Nouveau work that I like to use, both for cohesiveness across multiple pieces, and to have that older feel. I also like to have a layer that adds some textural elements, to give the pieces a bit more of an aged feel. I always have that layer active while working on color, as it can affect the colors somewhat, depending on my settings.

With this shot of the Tycoon, I’ve laid in the flat colors and roughly rendered aspects of the background, including the ground, the car and the estate in the distance. The Tycoon herself has had flat colors and a first pass on her clothing for value. Her face is pretty well rendered at this point, but will get some adjustments down the line. I like to lay the value in one big go and refine from there. This helps to keep the lighting consistent, especially when I’m working from multiple references. Of the three pieces, she had the least significant changes from start to finish.

The Street Tough’s frame went through several iterations before landing on the final. I had decided while working on the color that I wasn’t keen on the frame I had originally drawn up. I dove into some of my Mucha references and books, looking for inspiration and landed on the second image, but still wasn’t in love with it. After some feedback, I went in and broke up the upper shapes, keeping in theme with the side pieces, then added a gold border to the pieces. A few more changes to the walls and the background really helped dial this one in.

The Unfettered went through a number of changes, including a complete redraw on the shadowy figure. Feedback and another set of eyes on a piece is always a crucial aspect of art.

Sometimes as an artist, we get so into the fine details, and set with what’s in our heads that it doesn’t always read as intended, or we miss details that might otherwise be obvious if we stepped away for a bit and came back. Can you spot all of the changes as we kept tweaking until we got it just right?

The final three pieces! After lots of back and forth and adjustments, we made it to the end, with three shiny new archetypes to add to your Candela Obscura games! Enjoy! 

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Many thanks to Brandi for this deep dive on her process! You can find her on Instagram, Bluesky, and her website brandiyorkart.com, where there are even prints of these gorgeous illustrations.

If you haven’t seen it already, Darrington Press did an interview with designer Carlos Cisco and editor-in-chief Hannah Rose about the game design side of this article, plus advice for aspiring contributors.

We also have lots more bonus content coming up, and we’re hard at work on Horizons 3 and beyond. Let us know in the comments what speciality you most want to play and what you’d like to see next!

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