Gothic Farming Sim Concept Art

Illustration, Concept Art, Character design & Visual Development

A final project for a concept art course, in which students were tasked with reimagining an existing IP into a different genre, and then creating a package of concept art as if this reimagining was a new game in pre-production.

I chose to reimagine Fromsoft's 2015 action RPG Bloodborne as a farm sim like Stardew Valley.

I wanted to make something creepy but cozy, tending the monstrous residents of the dilapidated town and helping it thrive in it's strange, mutated state!

Silhouettes & Sketches

The first step for approaching this project was sketching out silhouettes for the protagonist and antagonist of the game. Here, I chose to reimagine Bloodborne's customizable hunter as more of a farmer, translating elements like the iconic tricorn hat into a sun hat and decking them out with tools like shovels and bags, while making sure to keep the layered, victorian-evocative clothing styles and implications of biohazard with bandages and blood (or mud?-- It could be either!).

Bloodborne had a host of options to pick for an antagonist-- I chose to reimagine the Moon Presence, one of the games final antagonists, as a consumptive force the player would need to placate or manage, and defeat. The Moon Presence's most striking feature is it's tentacles-- I wanted to emphasize those, always making sure they were coiled around so that the moon was visible behind it.

Protagonist Turnaround & 'Hero' Shot

Here is the completed 'hero' shot and turnaround for the protagonist! Strong shadows, dirt and ambiguous mud/blood, and a color palate evoking nature and gardening with retaining a dark and slightly muted feel with warm greens, dull reds, cream tones and brown. A bright red eye visible under the strong shadows of the hat retains a bit of spookiness and calls back to contagion, while the character as a whole still feels sort of cute.

Antagonist Turnaround & 'Hero' Shot

Here is the completed 'hero' shot and turnaround for the antagonist! To make sure this character contrasted with the protagonist and general more earthy and natural feeling of the rest of this hypothetical game, I went with a palate of greys mottled that evoked ash or smoke, with a red-orange connecting that blood moon in the sky to a internally lit ribcage that calls to mind a furnace or boiler, emphasizing that this creature is not a part of the life cycle of the monsters around it, however mutated they may be-- whatever it consumes is incinerated, and it is always hungry.

Mount Turnaround & 'Hero' Shot

Here is the completed 'hero' shot and turnaround for the mount! The mount, for this reimagining, is most closely based off of Bloodborne's iconic Vicar Amelia, a veiled and bandaged wolf-deer creature, formerly a church official. As such, veils and bandages, as well as tree branch-like antlers were all important elements to keep in mind for this design.

This was a particularly difficult turnaround to tackle, as the long but low to the ground design was something I had never drawn from those angles before, and required a few passes to come out in a way that made sense for an illustrated turnaround!

Prop Sheet

The prop sheet for this project features a mandrake-like carrot, something that the player would grow in the ground to fee to the monsters of the town. Alongside the turnaround and colored illustration are a few detail cutaways.

Landscape Speedpaint Studies

Four quick 30-minute speedpaints exploring some potential environments to be featured in the game. Elements like dilapidated buildings, overgrowth, and crumbling religious elements were all concepts that were important to explore.

Landscape Painting

With the character and landscape concepting complete for the bulk of the project, the last piece was to bring together those elements into a painting to demonstrate atmosphere, mood, scale, tone and feel of the reimagined IP. Here, the protagonist waters a makeshift garden in a crumbling cemetery with a can of blood. Dilapidated buildings frame the setting, and the night-time scene is lit warmly, both serene and a little spooky.