I made these two mood paintings during my art test for Faycrest Studios.
The cultists worship a blood god who imbues them with the ability to cast blood magic. However, the blood god demands a steady stream of human souls to quench his hunger and the cultists perform frequent sacrifices for him. The cultists kidnap citizens from the City above to sacrifice and use the city’s sewers to travel around unseen, popping up above ground to quickly kidnap some poor soul before vanishing again. It took a while for the cultists to tunnel into the sewer system, but it was well worth it.
For this art test, I was simply told to make concept art for the team’s game Solita and given minimal materials to work with. I was given a few prompts to work from and the one I chose was “Sewer dungeon beneath the noble city (slime monsters and cultists roam here)”. I was not given any story or background about the area more than that sentence, so all the story and logic for why the cultists are using the sewers are decisions I made.
I began with loose sketches with a pen and paper. I wanted to iterate quickly and not give myself the ability to erase, which could slow me down if I don’t commit to an idea.
I then made more thumbnails in photoshop, taking ideas from the paper thumbnails and iterating on them.
As the dungeon encounter progresses, the overall lighting gets darker and uses more magenta tones. This builds up to the sacrificial altar room, where a big boss battle would take place
The game’s camera is mostly a side view with a slight tilt down to look at the player character. I made my mood paintings with this in mind.
These are some explorations for the lamps leading to the sacrificial altar
