The Art of Tranquility.

I’ve been an illustrator for over twenty years, and after being made redundant from a position as head of marketing a couple of years ago, I made the move, almost by accident into the amazing world of game design and Illustration.

Since then I’ve been hugely fortunate, I’m able to make a living from this amazing industry, I get to illustrate and be part of diverse, creative ideas and projects. Tranquility is one such project.

After reading a post on Facebook about a new game and the requirement for a vector artist, I got in touch with and was hired by Peter and James. There are many kinds of projects, may kinds of people and many ways to develop a game. Peter recognised my skill set and my time as an illustrator, giving the opportunity for a collaboration rather than a series of orders and a “monkey see, monkey do” approach to the project.

Collaboration for myself as an illustrator is important, it should be important for all illustrators. It gives the opportunity to use our experience but also to flex our creative muscles and develop beyond a brief. This is the exact same reason I believe it’s important for game developers to allow this freedom and collaborative spirit, use your illustrators and designers experience, they generally know what they are doing, and given freedom will often go beyond expectations.

The initial brief was to create a series of lands that could be joined on a journey which would create an overall picture. The first thing to do was to define that, the cards where set as square but the brief required a series of landscapes, landscape is generally rectangular in style, the other issue was how to connect these lands. As the cards would be placed in a grid, I wanted a design that would address the flow of illustrations not just horizontally but vertically too, allowing for a fluid look to the game on all angles. The idea of Islands came naturally as it allows for a singular design of each card, this also allowed me to flip the landscape to make a night or reflective version of the island, converting what was once a rectangular design into something more square, something that neatly fits the shape of the card.