Exploring Nightmares
This is a style and idea exploration to create concept art fit for the world of Little Nightmares, created by Tarsier Studios.
It's been an effort to analyze and understand what it is that make something fit into this world. I've watched a lot of playthroughs, zooming in on details, looking at concept art and pressing my face to the screen while playing to figure out how things are built. There is something very special about these games that I've tried to catch. In some cases I've gotten close and in others, not so much. Here are my hits, my misses and my random sketches.
Bug collector's workshop. The first concept I made for this project. I focused on mood, light and details you'd want to look closer at.
Color and light experiments.
The bug collector
I sketched a lot of random creepy ugly characters to break art block and explore ideas. This creepy hag didn't make the cut.
More creepy, wonky and ugly sketches.
New boss concept. I needed a theme to work with and settled on a tailor with slightly skewed beauty standards.
I picked my two favorite silhouettes out of the first doodle sheet. I warped and rearranged them to create some variation and went on to fleshing them out.
I tried to not overthink things and just go with the ideas that came up in the moment. No judgement while exploring. Judgement comes in the next step.
After asking for opinions from a few friends I picked out the pieces they liked the most to put together the final tailor design. I wanted to show that he takes his craft seriously and wants to provide the best service to his customers. His way...
Props for the tailor's atelier.
The pressing room. I wanted to draw an environment concept that could open up for gameplay ideas. An adjustable table with a wheel to turn. A steam iron to plug in and tip over to cause a fire. A pair of scissors to knock down and steal. (Mono for scale)
Environment design with gameplay in mind
There are several scenarios involving the tailor that I would have liked to explore further. Rooms full of "customers" wrapped up in half-finished garments. Clusters of dangling coat hangers. Sneaking between sheets of hanging fabric.
Trying to match the iconic designs of Mono and Six is a daunting task, but I started painting this girl just for fun and ended up really liking her. I named her Mute.
24 versions of Mute. The original inspiration was the head wraps used to soothe tooth ache but I expanded on that to include bandages. I looked at children's clothing from different eras and social classes.
My main goal while desiging this character was to make you wonder what her deal is. Where does she come from and why is her head wrapped like that? I don't know the answers, but she must be hiding something...
I've had so much fun while working on this and the world of Little Nightmares continues to inspire me.