Cole Reece
Cole is a narrative designer and visual artist who enjoys drawing words and writing pictures. He is a queer, biracial man who wants to tell stories with heroes that look like him and those in his community. His work has been featured by the Scottish Book Trust and on many a close friend’s wall. He views games as the ultimate narrative experience and wants to make ones that are worth letting your tea go cold for.
Game Design Document – In order to convey my concept I created a Games Design Document where I outlined how I would adapt the Whyborne and Griffin series by Jordan L Hawk into a video game. This document included my concept art and plans for mechanical development, as well as my broader aims and inspiration.
Miss Lister Portrait – All the character art and assets were created using gouache because I wanted to maintain the imperfections and spontaneity that occurs when using a traditional medium. I was inspired by Bloodborne’s strong use of silhouette in their character designs and tried to incorporate it with my simpler illustration style and bolder use of colour.
Scene Illustrations – Although I decided to develop an adventure game I wanted to use spot illustrations to emphasise emotional moments, a technique inspired by Visual Novels. The loose brushwork represents the urgency of the climatic scene hopefully immersing players in the action more than text alone.
Key Challenges – The hardest part of any project is dealing with challenges and I tried to predict some that may occur during development and possible solutions. The page is decorated with extracts from my sketchbook and gesture drawings.
Creature Design – Final designs for the shadowy monster that acts as the antagonist of the game. It was difficult to translate the intentionally vague written descriptions into a tangible design, but I am happy with the effects my loose approach created.