Hi there Reader, long time no see! :)

At least it felt like a long time on my end. Taking just a week break from this newsletter after doing it for so long felt very weird!

How were you doing in the meantime? Today I'm really excited to show you new illustrations I've been working on, now that I'm finally able to draw again.

Let's dive in!

Recovering from my wedding!

As you might have seen on social media or in my last newsletter, the reason I took a break and didn’t post anything last Tuesday was because, to put it simply, I was getting married 😄

Sounds like a pretty good reason to me!

As you can imagine, we are both very happy that it’s finally done. Not only that the preparation came to an end, but also that the events went super well; and that now I’m a proper married man! :)
That sounds very serious haha, I’m still getting used to it!

But to come back to the topic of this newsletter, if you have followed the last few issues, I haven’t had time to draw a lot the past few weeks. Not only didn’t had much time with my work, but my mind was also very occupied with the wedding.

So it’s a bit rusty but excited that I can finally come back to do art!

Drawing imaginary games :)

This month we are going to Łódż’s 37th International Comics and Games Festival, so it’s a very good time to make new material to show there!

At first I wanted to make a zine or a short comic for the festival; And I was kinda stressing myself over getting new ideas, over making something good people would enjoy... just putting a lot of pressure on myself.

But then I realized: it’s crazy that I always want to have new and cool ideas while I have a lot of them sitting around in my sketchbook already 😄 And that’s how today’s illustration series came to be!

Because a few months ago I did a series of sketches showing fake video game screenshots, stylized as illustrations. So in other words, drawing a still frame of an imaginary game.

That kind of reminds me of a series I did more than 3 years ago, when I did "Virtual Plein-air" where I would literally boot up a game, sit down and draw what was in front of me :)

I was barely starting to draw illustration at the time, but I really enjoyed putting those older games through an artistic lens. And as you may know, I really love video games in general. I even used to make them!

So here are three sketches I worked on this week!

Stardew valley but with a witch

(Okay, I promise this is not the final title of the illustration I just couldn’t find a proper one yet)

Basically the idea of this imaginary game was to have a Stardew Valley-type game, but with a fantasy twist. But I think it would also work well as an RPG!

This one is probably my favourite so far.

Minecraft

Okay, I said I wanted to have only imaginary games at first, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was very inspired to draw Minecraft, but with my own spin!

One of my goals for the final version is to make it impressive to look far into the distance and still see all the details. I’m not too used to that when playing Minecraft, my computer could never handle a very long draw distance 😄

Fantasy shooter

Finally, I really wanted to have an homage to both Doom-like games, but also old-school RPGs like Daggerfall; while of course keeping it cute and lighthearted, or else it wouldn’t feel like my style!

I enjoyed drawing random detail for the UI. I was inspired by the game Hexen for example:

But also some of the beautiful UI of PC-98 visual novels; Those only released in Japan but had very stunning pixel arts!

I wanted to make a piece inspired by those old Japanese games, but I’m not sure if I’ll have the time just yet.

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So this is what I’ve been working on so far!

My goal is to have a finished illustration by the end of the week, and if I don’t overcomplicate it, it should be okay :)
Really looking forward to show you my progress in any case!

Cool links of the week

I was looking for reference for the fantasy shooter illustration and came across this Tumblr with a lot of old Dungeons & Dragon illustrations. Very cool style, I really recommend giving it a look!

A friend recently recommended me to listen to the music from an obscure platformer from the Dreamcast named Napple Tale. If I haven’t had the chance to play it yet, but the music is truly stunning, I really recommend you giving it a listen while you go about your day :)

Remember what I mentioned earlier about doing virtual plein-air? Sitting down and drawing video game landscapes? Well, turns out there is a Minecraft mods to do exactly this! :D