Hello all, 

I've wanted to write a post for a while to share the concept art from Snow Spire. I'll tell you my process and thoughts behind some of the visual design in this game!

I started concept designs before the jam began to save myself time when it came to asset creation, so these following few images are from late December.  I like to make multiple sketches of the character in different outfits and color them with different color schemes to figure out if each aspect fits the character. The first one designed was Lyra:

When I was designing her I was looking to make a wiser researcher character, but after drawing the second sketch with the brown pigtails I decided to make her seem a bit nerdier. I thought in terms of aesthetics the first one was extremely cute though, which later inspired Eir. I didn't have the full story nailed out when I was designing this, so I was also testing different color schemes. The first one was inspired by I Love My Follower (Count)! After this, I mashed the details I liked into her final design:

Originally, I designed everyone indoors and outdoors looks, but I ran out of time to implement them. I really adore Lyra's outdoor outfit though, so maybe I'll update them in some time later.

Next I was designing Eir. I had a lot of initial trouble deciding what her character would be like, so I tried a few different vibes.

I thought that the second sketch looked cool, but I felt like the person didn't match the outfit, so I went with another round of characters to get one I liked more. This next one I focused more on a crazy witch kind of vibe.

I didn't like the first two sketches I did for this one either, but they were getting better. I looked back at my process for Lyra and noticed the one design I liked, and gave the third sketch (the middle one in this picture) the same features. When I was drawing the one with blue hair I had a sort of eureka moment to add tattoos, and if you look closely at the Spire in the game and the stone tablet they match her tattoos. I wanted it to be a visual identifier that the whole ritual thing was about her, but I think there are other obvious details that give that away. I took the dress from the second sketch and the traits from the third and mashed them into the final design:

I was having a lot of fun messing with their designs for the outside outfits.

I did Faron's design much faster, I used one sheet to plan him entirely since I was running out of time before January started:

I think I hit the nail on the head when I was doing his third sketch, which is basically what the final design is. For his indoor outfit, I was planning on throwing him into the sweater the first sketch has. I thought the second sketch was also very cool, but it didn't fit his personality as well as I would have hoped. Since I had Lyra and Eir planned out at this point, I also made sure his color scheme matched theirs. After this I had a pretty solid color scheme idea for the full game, which is why the final sprites and backgrounds all use a lot of blue and purple.

I had a very specific idea for Thaddeus so I didn't have too much work making the concept for him. (And you know, I was behind schedule lol) 

He is a researcher as well, so I wanted him to look dignified. When I was writing him I planned out for him to be a deity too actually! I imagine he has similar marks to Eir underneath his clothes, and that's why he's fully covered up. I wanted there to be a reason why he knew so much about the rituals, I think I added a single line that hinted at it, but I don't expect many people made the connection. Flicker is meant to be a sort of familiar for him, which is why he also trusts her with a lot. While speaking of Flicker, I did not draw any concept art for her because of the time crunch and my disdain for drawing animals. I had a plan for her to transform between a human-like form and her animal form but that idea was cut early. 

Then I also planned out some locations!

Originally the house was going to be a small village with a bunch of other characters, but I decided I needed to scope down so the project could finish on time.  The "Spire" was originally going to be the tower part of the house, but that was changed! I had the snow field with the obelisks in it to have a sort of researching scene with Lyra and Faron, so that they could puzzle together the ritual but I thought the puzzle part would be too obvious and agonizing to read so I changed most of the scenes to focus more on building relationships with the characters. 

I liked the room layout I made but I was very disappointed in my ability to draw interiors. In the end, I made a few 3D models and traced them to make the backgrounds in the game.

The last picture is actually what the spire would have originally looked like, it was a sort of isle of obelisks leading up to a larger one. I thought it would be cool to have the main menu look like it was engraved into one of the obelisks but I changed it to a simpler one so I could focus more on designing other areas of the game. 

And finally, when I was making the sprites I had trouble deciding what they should look like, so here are the first two Eir outtakes!

I decided to start over after both of these because I thought the poses weren't dynamic enough and the anatomy could have been improved. I was a lot more mindful making the other sprites because I didn't want to keep restarting. 

I am satisfied with how the game turned out but I feel I was heavily limited by my time crunch. If you're just cracking into making games yourself, I advise you not to start like I did: give yourself time! If you think you won't stick to a game if it isn't under a time limit, I recommend going for jams that are longer than a month, or finding a team to spread the load. 

Thank you for reading!