So our big Fallout 3 project just wrapped up and our new project for Prince of Persia just kicked off. Pretty good timing. We're fortunate that we really get to pick and choose what games we create these Penny Arcade Presents projects for. Every year we end up turning down way more than we accept. Fallout was obviously a game that Tycho had a real passion for. It was fun for me as well since it was my my first experience with that world. I ended up really digging the setting and the idea of the vaults. This new project for Prince of Persia is one that I was especially excited about.
I've seen the game a couple times now and it's just beautiful. The illustrated look of the characters against the almost painted backgrounds is just gorgeous. With the current tech we can make stuff that looks photo realistic. Games like Gran Turismo are perfect examples. That's fine but I've always felt like games need an impressionist movement. We need designers to say "yeah, we could make it look real, but we're gonna make it look cool."
In my opinion this new Prince game is a perfect example of that idea. The game looks like a story book come to life and it's that idea that really inspired me on this latest comic. Since the game feels like a story book, I thought why not create an actual story book to go along with it.
Tycho wrote a really classic tale that will give you some back story on Elika as well as the Hunter. For my part I wanted this story book to feel authentic. So I raided my son's book shelf and I also pulled out a box of baby stuff my Mom had given me. It had some awesome Little Golden Books that I had read as a kid. With all these great books around as inspiration I sat down to use Photoshop in a way that I never had before. I wanted to really "paint" with it and that meant learning all new techniques. Kiko challenged me to get rid of my reliance on think outlines which was terrifying but also exactly what I needed to do. In the meantime I started to try real paints for the first time and I found that the more I painted on canvas the better I got painting in Photoshop. I've really tired to push myself in some new directions recently and this Prince of Persia comic has been the catalyst.
The project has 16 unique digital paintings each accompanied by a page of story. The cover as well as the first page are up over at the Prince of Persia site now. I'd like to take a second here to thank Ubi for the incredible presentation. They went above and beyond with they way they are delivering the pages. They've created a really classy UI that I think actually enhances the comic. They will be updating it with new pages all the way up until the games release in December. I'll try and keep you posted here as new pieces of the story become available. There isn't much there just yet but please head over and take a look. As always I'm excited to hear what you all think so drop me a mail with your thoughts.
-Gabe out
