The Enemy Within - Developer Diary #4.pdf

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Developer Diary: the Artists’ Edition.
JG O’Donoghue and Sam Manley, two of Cubicle 7’s amazingly talented artists discuss their favourite
pieces from
The Enemy Within,
share their creative process and illustrate exactly how they create art for
these campaigns— from the brief, to the themes, initial sketches, the approval process and much more.
Welcome to the fourth edition of our
Sam Manley
JG O’Donoghue
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Sam is currently working on
The Enemy Within
and Age of Sigmar. He has previously provided artwork
Sam Manley
for
Cthulhu Tales, World War Cthulhu, Cthulhu Britannica, The Laundry, Lone Wolf,
the
Doctor Who Card
as a teenager when he played the game, but he was really drawn into the world through the amazing
artwork. Sam is a self-taught digital artist, and time allowing, dabbles in oil and scribbling with ink.
Game,
The One Ring, Adventures in Middle-earth, and WFRP.
Warhammer had a huge impact on Sam
Grim and Perilous
It seems apt to start with a piece titled: ‘Grim and Perilous’... The brief for this painting was to convey a
downtrodden, moody, oppressive-feeling street that our heroes are trudging through. Joy is definitely not
sparked in their hearts here. Anyway, they’ll take centre stage, but the world of the scene around them is
every bit as important.
We nearly always need a sketch to start — some very small pieces might not need one, if they’re
simple and not plot-critical, but otherwise a sketch is always produced. The sketches need to be approved
by C7 and Games Workshop before we can move on to the painting stage. Here, I felt that a closed-in
Hopper-like) feeling would. Tighter-packed buildings put together in a rather ramshackle manner, bent
wooden beams and awkwardly-placed repair works are an Empire staple, so they had to be included!
setting better captured the feeling of an Empire street than a more open and spacious, desolate (almost
Lighting is always important in setting mood. In this case, that mood needed to be overcast, grey and grim
— really hammering home an atmosphere so thick you could slice it. So, that’s established, I’ve an idea of
how I want the scene to look, but now I need to think about the characters. When we depict heroes, we
be in the same place at any one time anyway. So the choice over who ends up where is normally
usually don’t show all of them as they can crowd out all but the bigger scenes, and they’re not all going to
influenced by who hasn’t been seen so much recently, and who makes the best compositional sense given
their body shapes, attitudes and clothing colours. In this case, I definitely wanted the Witch Hunter, face
obscured, head bowed, trudging forwards.The Slayer to her right made an excellent counterpoint to her in
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shape and colours. Bringing up the rear, I felt a taller character worked better, and also someone who had
a visible stride would read better at a distance — robes would more than likely just obscure the gait — and
out in the streets I could depict a disreputable array of fanatics, unfortunates, and other Empire denizens
you certainly wouldn’t want to run into! I took inspiration here from previous Warhammer titles, in
so the Captain made the team. Then it was on to the background characters. These people are always fun;
particular, John Blanche’s and Dave Gallagher’s wonderful illustrations in
Death on the Reik.
In my sketch,
I rather liked the foreground woman who is staring right at the viewer, and the strange little moon-faced
familiar (who’s having probably the best time of anyone there), grinning and perched up on the roof at the
edge. I made the ground muddy, added some indications of rain, ensured we’ve got those all-important
Warhammer symbols so we’re firmly rooting details in the Empire, and the sketch held together.
Okay, so it got approved without any major changes. I was cleared to progress to the painting stage. The
shapes are all working together, the roughly scrubbed in tones more or less as I want them — it was
succeeding as a black and white composition. The painting might be the longer stage relative to the
sketch, but most of the difficult work is already done. However, colour choices are still very important;
naturally we’re leaning into more drab colours, with some kind of contrast to draw the viewer’s eye. You
know that overcast light you sometimes see in the late afternoon? Where the sky’s dark but there’s still a
move to reds, greys, even dull greens, where I needed them, and my piece would remain cohesive. The
darker toned Witch Hunter and the more brightly coloured Slayer both stood out against the paler
background for different reasons , and the edges of the picture could be allowed to fade into more
the scene looked properly wet, and it was sent for approvals.
stronger light coming through? That was the idea. If I anchored the whole thing as dull yellow, I could then
unified colours to keep the focus on the more centrally-located contrasts. A final pass was to make sure
Now, I did have a change or two to make before it was finished-finished (not a Skaven, I swear!). The
in the rain, but that was deemed a bit to 80s-looking, so I lifted it back up a bit. Little revisions are
that sorted, Grim and Perilous was finished!
biggest one was a note about what to do with the Slayer’s hair! Originally, I had it sagging a whole lot more
common: small tweaks to details, things that need minor changes to convey the right impression. With
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Red Moon
The Red Moon Inn, seen previously in
Fatshark Games’ Vermintide,
was a double-page tavern scene,
that means there’s a whole lot to pack in! In fact, Fatshark kindly shared some of their existing art assets
with us — so C7’s Red Moon Inn was directly based on theirs! It had to feel busy, so a good number of
our heroes and a lot of supporting background characters were called for. I was trying to keep the feeling
of the interactions and lighting somewhere between that of Gérôme and Caravaggio. (Well... you have to
aim high, right?) Once again it was a sketch first, and the more complex the scene the more critical it is
very tight, a day to draw and three days to paint.
to make sure that the main elements are clearly readable at this stage. The time limit on this one was also
The big challenge was trying to get the sense of scale right: it’s a wide scene, but we need to show some
of the height of the inn without leaving a whole lot of boring space towards the top of the image. Fading
let’s just roll with it…) to anchor the composition; almost like a halo under which the rest of the scene
to a darker colour toned up there helped, as did using the chandelier (bit of a grand term for what it is, but
unfolds. With most of the details more or less suggested by the existing Fatshark version, I could focus
more on the patrons — obviously we needed a decent spread of our heroes, a greater number than Grim
and Perilous required, but we also needed a cast of varying other characters. The foreground dwarf, who
we see from the back, functioned to help lead the eye into the scene, giving some additional depth to it
(a technique called repoussoir, literally ‘to push back’). We have someone sturdy-looking behind the bar,
we have shady dealings going on under the top-left balcony, a couple making their way into the main hall,
a chap at the table who doesn’t really look like he’s living his best life right now, a slumped soldier at the
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bar, and we can see various other ne’er do wells in the room at the back. Now, I love getting to dig into
moments like this — who are these people? In my head, I tell myself little stories about them as I work.
I think you can plant the seeds of a lot of tales by making background characters visually interesting, in
body language or details. Here, one man has animal skulls strapped to him; one’s wearing an eyepatch
and is pointing at someone in the room; the couple walking in look a little more upmarket than everyone
else; the slumped soldier — are they down on their luck? Drinking to forget… something? Each of them
viewer might choose to interpret what they see.
has dozens of different possible stories to tell, roles to play in different adventures, depending on how the
Alright, changes… again, minimal. I think originally our Slayer was holding an axe and a pint, and that was
changed to be two pints. And, with that, it was on to the painting! Colour choices here were, again,
reasonably simple to figure out: candlelight ensured we had warmth, and everything else got keyed in from
there. I really didn’t want to make the shadows too cool this time (generally if you have warm light you
have cool shadows, and vice-versa), as I felt the shadows didn’t need that much attention, other than to
areas were otherwise appearing too homogeneous (such as the green feather in the slumped soldier’s
happen earlier on.
define the light. With that established, I could take time to render the piece, add little shots of colour where
hat) and bring it to a finish. As with Grim and Perilous, and with nearly every painting, the critical choices
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