Hello there!
We thought it would be cool to introduce you to some of the team that made Kitty Powers' Matchmaker, and what makes them tick.
First of all we'd like to introduce you to Daniel Thomas. He's a freelance artist based in Sweden and often goes by the name 'Zyndikate' when he's lurking in art forums ;-)
Daniel did pretty much all of the hand drawn art for the game, including the characters and backgrounds and the UI.
We asked him a few questions, and here are his answers and some of his work!
How did you get into the games industry, was it through education, or another way?
I guess you could say it started from my childhood, like many others, while playing games was cool - you always wanted to make your own. Growing up I played with editors for my favourite games to create my own content. I always liked to draw as a kid, but it was really Monkey Island 3 (art by Bill Tiller) that made me want to become an artist and work on games. While tech and other super impressive feats were cool, Monkey Island stood out with it's unique style and atmosphere.
I did study to be a 3D game artist at vocational school, while I didn't have a problem with it, 2D and painting was the thing I kept coming back to.
Do you have any advice for budding games artists?
Maybe boring but true: keep improving, never think you are close to being a completed artist :)
What is your favourite style and why? Do you have a favourite piece that you've created?
The style that comes naturally to me would be my favourite. Bright, cartoony and fairly rendered.
My piece I like the most is:
Space Hero by Daniel Thomas
But for the reason that it reminds me of a big milestone for me as far as an artist goes - not because I consider it the best piece.
What inspired you when you were designing Kitty Powers' Matchmaker's look?
For everything you could say the colour pink was the main inspiration. :)
Pink. Lots of pink.
For backgrounds it was mostly old cartoons with clear shapes and texture, and it has those nice sharp shapes for light and shadows.
Vintage cartoons inspired the backgrounds.
Other than that not so much influences, I just went with what I usually do with rendering and shapes.
What challenges did you overcome when creating the art for Kitty Powers' Matchmaker, and how did you do it?
The characters were a challenge, to make sure everything fitted no matter what combination of cloth, hair, accessories etc. you had.
Making all the character parts fit together was a pain in the bumbum (not Daniel's words)
The solution was nothing special, I just made sure I outlined the borders clearly for each asset type and make sure assets were drawn inside the border.
That and make everything pink enough!
Are you working on anything exciting you'd like to tell us about?
My own project, which has been in production for a while, called 'The Journey of Iesir' (for now).
The Journey of Iesir
We don't even have our own homepage yet, that's how indie we are!
Thanks to Daniel for taking the time to talk to us. Hopefully we'll see him in the next Magic Notion production!
You can see some more of Daniel's work at his website here: www.danielthomasart.com
