Art Report #2 - Necrochemist Archetype

Hey everyone!

We've been busy working over at our Trello board and neglected this blog for quite a while - time to change this.

We'll explain our revamped rpg system a bit later (since it's currently under heavy debates), but what's certain is that it will be mostly classless and players will be free to pick Abilities from any Discipline as they build their character. Disciplines are merely a groups of similarly themed abilities ranked by their power and EXP cost. Today i want to show you how the character who pursued the Necrochemistry Discipline might end up looking like:


Some of Necrochemistry abilities include:
- Spraying Toxins and creating deadly pools of acid to limit enemies movement
- Spawning Corpsesauruses from dead enemies. Type of summon depends on the type of the corpse, so you might get Fanged Corpsesauruses from dead wolves, Poisoned Corpsesauruses from toxic bodies, etc
- Unleashing Confusing Gas to disorient enemies and even force them to attack each other

Here's my design process for her:
First of all, i had these sketches from a mentorship course with Anthony Jones (highly recommended btw):


That's where i learned a LOT about the nuances of the design process - before that i was doing it in a semi-random way, without giving to much thought about the PURPOSE of elements and design PRINCIPLES like Balance (having a busy parts full of details contrasted by very light detail free parts so the eyes of the viewer can rest) and Unity (having a number of repeating elements/patterns throughout the design). As a challenge i decided to repeat the design process completely by myself. I started with lots of super rough silhouettes, focusing on an insect/creepy/toxic themes:


Afterwards i picked up the ones that looked interesting and developed them into simple sketches:


Initially i went for the Ratlike option:


But eventually switched to the Spiderlike variant because:
1) There will be ratlike race inhabiting the world so i wanted to avoid overlapping themes
2) For illustration purposes we needed more ranged heroes because we already had enough melee guys (you'll see them in the following days)
3) I instantly fell in love with the idea that Necrochemists use partly hollow shell of an insect as their backpack/exoskeleton. They are manipulating it by sending electroshock impulses to the insect's nerve system and forcing it to move its limbs to help reload a rifle or slash nearby enemies


Even though i really liked the Syringe Spear from the first sketches, i needed a cool and appropriate looking gun for the Spiderlike design:


With colors i focused on the idea that Necrochemists are both creepy/dealing with toxic things (green), and are usually found in the upper echelons of society (golden) - i'll eventually address how this works out in a later City post.



Hope this looks interesting enough and tomorrow i'll share a Steam Knight archetype.
Have a great day!