So, hi! My name is Kelley Frisby, and I’m an unsuspecting victim in the indie game process (LOL).  Truthfully, I’m a traditional artist who saw a unique and interesting challenge in front of her and jumped head first without thinking of all the obstacles I was about to come into contact with. When initially approached to join with Ugly Baby Studios and their premier game, Exhumed, I thought to myself, “Oh, no. I can’t do that. I draw cute things, girly things, things that parents read to their children before bed.” What do I know about zombies and video games? Not that much apparently, but it turns out I am a quick learner. I took my ridiculously expensive art school education and did some research.

I played House of the Dead at the arcade, I shot Rabbid bunnies with my boyfriend’s wii-mote, I remembered the secrets hidden in the pipes that I thought even Mario had forgot. I even took  a few lessons from American McGee’s Alice and you know what all that did for me? Other than having a shit load of fun, it actually confused me more. I saw so many interesting concepts and styles that I truly admired.

But at the same time I was lost as to where to take the look of these zombies. So I went with what I DO know, and that’s composition and characters. I started small and reworked things. I went back to my traditional education and pulled out my art books. I took inspiration from the people who have always inspired me, Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are,  artists like Edward Gorey and Arthur Rackham…then I started really thinking about how the games look would be influenced by my artwork and I started brainstorming ways to keep this new and unique and yet creepy and zombie-ish.

For some odd reason I kept visualizing the old movie posters of the 40′s and seeing rockabilly girls and I thought: Pin Up Zombie! She was reworked many times, but ultimately the pieces fell into place…a few pieces even fell off, but we won’t discuss that now.  I initially went with the idea that if I combined the look of the old zombie films with the popularity and attractiveness of the Pin Up girl that it would make for an interesting and fun look.

All this lead me to the main character we have now. That and the fact that the game’s Man in Charge, wanted an overall hand drawn look to the game that seems to be lost in today’s video game world. Not lost completely, I’m told, but few and far between. Looking through the games I’ve been playing recently I’d have to agree. So today, in my first of a few Behind the Scenes Exhumed pieces, I will showcase not only a few of my progress shots, but point out a few of the latest and greatest art styles I’m really enjoying right now.

As mentioned above, I am not primarily a gamer, I am not an expert on these things. I am still new, still learning, still discovering some of these stories and pictures for the first time. But my artist’s eye tells me a lot. While I can admire and respect the talent it takes to create some of these 3d masterpieces out there, I get so much more enjoyment out of some of the simpler designs. The designs and art styles that don’t seem like much but are really beautiful and inspiring in their simplicity.

Games like: World of Goo and Lost Winds have such a wonderful sense of style. I think a lot of people out there miss just how hard it is to sometimes keep things clean and simple, to not overload your viewer with every tiny detail. That’s a talent not many can boast: the ability to communicate with simplicity and elegance. Line work and subtlety, finding the perfect color palette; those aren’t just simple things to discover and create. Looking at the upcoming remake of A Boy and His Blob I would much rather get lost for hours in that game, where everything was created in a specific style for a made-up world, born of the imaginary. It’s what makes us lose ourselves in these games in the first place. They are not real life. We can lose ourselves in the imaginary and forget the reality of our everyday lives for a little while, and it’s the very rare artist who can achieve this far more difficult goal.

In the next part, we’ll showcase a step by step progression of the building up of a character concept for our game!