When we started work on Heroes of Feonora back in 2007 the most immediate goal was putting something together that was functional and playable...a working prototype.  This meant that luxury ingredients such as eye-catching artwork was not a high priority (nor should it be at this stage as most game designers will tell you).  There eventually came a point where some degree of artwork became a necessity, such as with the main game board and the Story Maps.  At this point we turned to our own (less than spectacular) abilities and the open source artwork community.  With more essential elements of gameplay and mechanics ironed out this 'placeholder artwork' gave the game just enough polish to justify a public release.  If no further updates/improvements were ever implemented the game would still be fully playable, functional and (we hope) lots of fun.

But a project like this never seems quite satisfied with staying in one place and there is a desire to eventually expand the visual feature set, particularly in areas such as card art and character portraits.  Whether this plays out fully is another story, but in the meantime we've taken at least one small step toward that goal, a step that would not have been possible without the help of two people who I'd like to introduce today.

Some time ago I tapped a segment of the online art community...mostly to see what level of interest the project might generate.  The initial response wasn't overwhelming, but turned out to be more encouraging than first anticipated.  Eventually two artists emerged with a willingness to lend some of their time and talent to the project, a project mind you not backed by a big name or studio-sized budget.  Suffice it to say the resulting production drawings couldn't have been more pleasing to watch, as they slowly took shape - bringing a wonderful mixture of characters to life.  After several months of collaboration Heroes of Feonora now proudly features its debut collection of polished artwork in the form of Character Portraits, highlighting the outstanding talents of Ian Garnett and Reggie Cuvelier.

Both artists came through with a visual style that compliments the whimsical nature of Feonora, an imaginary world filled with creatures and characters ranging from serious to comical (and everything in-between).  Much of Feonora pays tongue-in-cheek homage to traditional roleplaying conventions, while the rest strives to achieve a unique sense of identity and inter-character cohesion within the overall genre.  Reggie and Ian's works go a long way in conveying both elements of the game world and the credit is deservedly theirs.  From a designer standpoint there's only so much you can convey to the artist...afterwards, it's up to them to take hold of your vision and then bring it to life.

Development of art assets for a game of this scale is no small matter.  This initial [test] phase of production proved a conceptual approach for making it happen and gave us an opportunity to work with two artists who were professional, accommodating and a pleasure to work with.  To learn more about each artist visit the Credits page; both their names link through to an online portfolio, along with a broader selection of works (including contact info).

P.S.  I know it's been a while since the last character background posted, but we haven't forgotten about the others.  The goal was never to push these out at regular intervals, although admittedly it would have been nice to produce these at a clip of about one per month.  But things don't seem to work that way when the project is still more a hobby than a living.  Rather than setting expectations on which character will be featured next and when, let me just say that so far we've explored four of them, which leaves eight more to go.