With Dishonored reaching its tenth anniversary this year – and Noclip releasing footage of Arkane’s scrapped Ravenholm game – I thought I could look at the art across the Dishonored games. The first article looked at Dishonored’s environments. This article will focus on the Dishonored’s characters.

Released in 2012, Dishonored is widely known and beloved for its distinctive art style. In both its environment and character design, the game features a stylised, exaggerated aesthetic.

British Faces

In the previous article, I talked about how the city is made up of sharp lines and blocky shapes and how that is used for visual storytelling. Well this visual language also continues in the character design. Anyone who has ever played Dishonored or seen anything about it, will surely recognise the sharp, scowling faces with exaggerated features.

Both Viktor Antonov, who was the game’s Visual Design Director, and Sebastian Mitton – the Art Director at Arkane – have spoken about how they visited London to get a sense of the city (see previous article). However, they also studied British faces, to try and understand what makes a face British. Frankly, if the Dishonored characters are what they’ve settled on, it’s pretty insulting.

In addition to modern day images, the art team at Arkane looked at photographs and illustrations from the Victorian and Edwardian eras. They looked at mugshots from Britain and Australia to get a sense of what type of character would fill the dark city of Dunwall. The art team were then able to use their own mugshots in-game, to help enrich the environment’s storytelling.

The Artistic Inspirations

The artists the developers looked at included Dean Cornwell and Charles Dana Gibson. The developers of Dishonored liked Cornwell’s use of shape and line. In the two paintings above, you can see the same geometric style that the characters of Dishonored have. In the left painting, you can clearly see the use of brushstrokes and line to create expression. However, it is not fully realistic, Cornwell doesn’t mix the shades, but places them next to each other. This creates that blocky style, echoed in Dishonored. Also, note in the painting on the right how the man in the background resembles one of the Pendletons from Dishonored.

With Gibson’s illustrations, the developers at Arkane focused on his portrayal of the aristocracy. The team were particularly interested in his use of line. In the illustration above, look how Gibson’s use of quick, sharp lines completely defines the character’s personality with little detail. Look how the sharp lines, wavy hair and angular nose is repeated again and again in Dishonored’s characters.

Cedric Peyravernay

The most famous artist to be associated with the Dishonored game is surely concept artist, Cedric Peyravernay. The artist’s style is a match made in heaven for the style of Dishonored. So much so, in fact, that it would not be a surprise to learn that Peyravernay developed his famous style based on the research the team at Arkane did. In the paintings above, look how the use of line is similar to the angular lines of Gibson. Or how for the second game, Peyravernay’s concepts (on the right) took on the scratch-like hatching of Gibson.

In addition, the use of a bold, angular silhouette – accentuated by stark highlights – is similar to Cornwell and J.C. Leyendecker. The geometric brushwork is also reminiscent of Lucian Freud. Also note how the concepts look like mugshots with their turnarounds.

City and Characters Alike

By using the same visual language as the city’s design, the characters echo the same tone. They not only add a sense of cohesiveness to the world, feeling like they belong to the city. They also seem to illustrate the violence, danger and oppression that permeates the city. With their sharp edges, the characters of Dishonored feel dangerous or ruthless. Their patchwork-like skin echoes the blockiness of the city’s industry, but it also evokes that feeling of disease as the plague ravages Dunwall. The tall bodies and long faces reflect the verticality of the city’s architecture, but their furrowed brows and sharp noses echo the pointed rooves.

This sense of exaggerated line is consistent throughout the entire game. Hell, even the rats reflect the same characteristics. In fact, with their angry scowls the characters begin to look like rats. This not only reminds the players of the plague but also reflects the character’s dark, scheming personalities.

The art style is still incredibly effective after 10 years. The city and characters alike help to set the tone of the world and drive the story forward. Their exaggerated features and movements make the player feel slightly disorientated, echoing that off-kilter feeling in the story. They’re similar but something’s not quite right.

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The post The Art of Dishonored: The Characters first appeared on Get2Gaming.

With Dishonored reaching its tenth anniversary this year – and Noclip releasing footage of Arkane’s scrapped Ravenholm game – I thought I could look at the art across the Dishonored games. Because no one has ever done that before. Nonetheless, despite its lack of originality, this article will focus on the first Dishonored game’s environments.

Released in 2012, Dishonored is widely known and beloved for its distinctive art style. In both its environment and character design, the game features a stylised, exaggerated aesthetic.

Dunwall

The game takes place in the fictional city of Dunwall. The city is ravaged with a plague and is under oppressive rule. This feeling of danger, disease and oppression is reflected throughout the city’s design. Viktor Antonov, who was the game’s Visual Design Director, spoke of being inspired by the Victorian era and Lovecraftian literature. Antonov made it clear he wanted the game to feel like a painting or novel, rather than a traditional video game environment.

The city of Dunwall is based on London. Initially, with the idea of the plague, the game was to be set during the Great Plague in 1666. However, the game was moved to its own time and place – drawing inspiration from medieval and modern periods alike. Eventually, they settled on what Sebastian Mitton – the Art Director at Arkane – called a Neo-Victorian style. The developers visited London and Edinburgh to study the architecture and get a feel for the cities. They also studied a number of paintings and photographs from the Victorian and Edwardian eras to get a sense of style.

The Visual Language of Dunwall

The style of Dunwall makes great use of shape in its design. The city is filled with sharp edges and blocky shapes. The use of sharp edges in Dunwall helps to create this Gothic style, with its use of sharp points and repeated triangles in the city’s landscapes. However, the blocky shapes repeated throughout the architecture create an industrial style, echoed throughout the game. Mitton spoke of how the developers noticed the verticality of London and this is reflected in Dishonored’s architecture. The imposing, stylised buildings shoot straight up and then come to a sharp point at the rooves.

Overall, this design helps to evoke the tone of the story. The crowded, tall buildings overwhelm and oppress the player. The blocky edges and straight lines reflect the industrial age of Dunwell. The sharp edges echo that sense of danger and violence in the city. The Gothic style and murky atmospheres help reflect this feeling of horror and tension that the plague evokes. The exaggerated style and crowded environment helps create this sense that everything is off-kilter – again reflected in Dishonored storyline.

In the next article we’ll be looking at how this visual language is continued in Dishonored’s character design.

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The post The Art of Dishonored: The Environments first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Well, I’ll start with a small introduction, shall I?

My name is Tamara, I’m 24 years old. I work at Go2games as a Graphic Designer; It’s my responsibility to create product posts and memes for social media platforms and creating unique and eye-catching visuals.

In the first half of the day, I focused on creating eyecatching posts of products Go2games have to offer. Here is an example of one previous post I created:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CTPEMXNsDMM/

When it comes to creating this kind of post the first thing I tend to focus on is using a border that will help catch people’s attention. To give the whole image a more ‘gaming’ type of feel. I decided on a pixel type of border using the signature Go2Games colours; Blue & Purple. Then after designing the border, the next thing to do is add a background, as a plain white background can get somewhat boring after seeing it over and over and the goal is to choose a colour that can not only relate to the game but it can also catch the attention of its audience.

So in this case, No More Heroes 3 was the main focus of this post, so I decided on adding a shadow behind the gaming case to give it a 3D effect and settled on the colour purple as it helped flatter the colours used in the game. But just using a plain purple background wouldn’t be enough to make it stand out so with the help of a colleague, he was able to design a background that gave an ombre effect, showing off different shades of purple which made the background more pleasing to the human eye.

So now that the game had its own unique way to stand out plus the simple but effective background, all that was left was to add the appropriate text to entice its viewers to purchase this product and of course, adding our signature Go2Games Logo so viewers know exactly where to purchase the product, my job was almost done.

The last step in the Product Post process is for me is to upload the completed version and then contact our very own social media team, who hold the responsibility of posting what I create. Once they have a look and I’ve given the okay. My job is done and I move on to the next product post that was assigned to me. I will work on this for the majority of the day unless I have been assigned another task.

That’s just a rough idea of what I get up to during a workday at Go2Games.

Signing off till next time!

The post Tamara – Graphic Designer – 03-09-21 first appeared on Get2Gaming.

As this is the first time posting on this blog, I think it would make most sense to start with a brief introduction. My name is Ron Zlatkin, I am 24 years old, and am currently working at Go2Games as a content producer and editor. There are a few videos that I have (partially) edited on our YouTube page, including the EPOS H3 Unboxing video, and the Go2Verses Love Cronx.

This morning at the Go2Games store, I arrived just before 10am to start my day. Toby joined not much later, and after a quick morning meeting and going through the goings of the day, we started working on the first video of the day. This was the unboxing video for the Atari Flashback 7, which Toby presented and I will be editing. Unfortunately we have not taken a moment to review the actual console, as we didn’t have the correct adapters for TVs. So we will have to shoot additional footage further down the line.

After this, we shot a quick section for a meme that we’ll be editing soon. There’s been a video going around where people keep hitting bottles off screen, to each other. We’re going to play a joke on that. Can’t say exactly what that is going to be, but should be quite funny.

After this we decided to go on lunch break. When we came back from Greggs (sometimes it’s a good idea, okay?), our colleague Sam had arrived.

Not long after this, we finished up on our break, and went on to do the next part of the day – Game of the Week. A simple concept really, we talk about a game that has been trending during the week. Usually we film this on a Friday, but we opted to do it today. That way, it will go up on a Friday instead, making more sense to determine the game of the week. Previous episodes can be found here and here. This week we talked about the new Ratchet And Clank.

And finally, the best part of any Wednesday – we filmed the new episode of Gaming Shart! The first episode is not up as of writing this, but it is my favourite show that we do. Shortly said, I host a show in the character of Bob Ron, and draw a video game character that I either know or don’t know, to the best of my ability. This week, we had a head-to-head matchup, as I competed against Toby in drawing the best looking Kratos from God of War. We did this separately, so we wouldn’t know what the other persons art looks like. At the end the art was revealed to us, and an impartial judge decided who won.

All in all another successful day on set, and tomorrow it’s going to be editing the unboxing video from home.

For all the games mentioned as well, go and visit go2games.com

This has been Ron, see you next

The post My day at Go2Games – Ron Zlatkin, 9-6-2021 first appeared on Get2Gaming.