'Forest of Sleep' Game Titles

Back in the late summer my friend Dick Hogg recommended me via Twitter to British company Twisted Tree Games, who were searching for a lettering artist to create a logo for their new game in development, Forest of Sleep. After shoving my hand in the air like a keen kid in class, and sending some samples their way, I got the job.

Inspired by and based on Eastern European folk tales, storytelling and narrative, and led by Nicolai Troshinsky's illustration work, the game is a beautiful journey through the woods. But you have to make your own way - and it might not work out for you, as unpredictable outcomes, for better or for worse, await you every time you play.

I was extremely impressed by its aesthetic, and even more impressed to read about the process, study and research that was going on behind the scenes, informing this curious game the likes of which I'd never seen before. It didn't fit my slightly out of date notion of 'gaming'  - despite being a fan of such beautiful contemporary games as Firewatch, Hohokum, Poto and Cabenga and the strange Papers Please which are illustration-led and work in a very different way from the platform / level-up format I knew in my teens and early 20s, I've been outside that world for too long, and was excited by this way of being re-introduced.

Hannah and Ed at Twisted Tree are clever people. They talk of things which in themselves sounds to the layman like a series of Dark Arts - AI, procedural generation and storytelling - and indeed producer Hannah has a PhD in Games-influenced Theatre and Theatre-influenced Games. In this article, she breaks down why this way of playing is so different and what she and Ed are trying to do:

We’re trying to make something that’s interesting to play, and which the player can push back against. Both in the sense of leaving gaps and letting the player fill those gaps with their imagination (which also relies on us framing things in a way that feels important enough that you might want to fill those gaps) and letting the player show what they’re interested in by how they interact with the game.

We’re doing this thing of reacting to the player, taking things from them, transforming and giving them back, rather than generating a story and the player just walking through it'.

Ed explained what they were looking for over the phone and I got to work researching Eastern European folk tales, Cyrillic script, Slavic languages and typefaces, Yuri Norstein films and folk art:

I started sketching in pencil in my sketchbook, and moved through rounds of feedback till a look was arrived at that was neither too Goth, too spiky, scary, menacing for playful - a balance that was tricky but very enjoyable to achieve as I immersed myself in the rare indulgences of fine-honing, endless tweaking and refining; we had quite a bit of time on this, which felt like an unusual pleasure:




The first problem was how to avoid what's known as 'Faux Cyrillic' - a device I've used myself on teen fiction to create the immediate suggestion of an exotic, somehow dangerous foreign language - which is the mimicking of the backward-appearance of some letters used in Soviet or Russian languages. Although it can look startling and impactful when done carefully and in the appropriate context, this was something to be avoided for this identity. So that was deleted from the concepts!

I moved to ink pretty quickly once early sketches were done; much as I love the look of a pencil drawing, it's often much easier for a client to visualise the weight and impact of a piece of type when it's rendered - albeit crudely or as a rough - in the actual medium it'll eventually appear in:

Ed liked the moon, but was wary of anything whimsical that might in any way Disney-fy the look - so this ink-washed moon was cut:

The letterforms were drawn freehand with a calligraphic nib pen, about 1/8" wide, with some strokes made with a 1/8" wide nib. The flourishes were done with my standard dip pen and favourite nib - but an older one, a little bit worn, to ensure the line wasn't too 'clean':

The final logo with its 'insignia' version, in colours to suit different uses within the game:

I'm really looking forward to seeing the game in its full and final form, and spend hours, the way I used to, playing the afternoons away. Thank you to Ed and Hannah for giving me the opportunity to get stuck into this job; it's gone down as one of my favourites, I think.

http://twistedtreegames.com/forest-of-sleep/
@edclef
@hannahnicklin
@PluralGames
http://www.troshinsky.com/eng.html

Non-illustration Leisure Time: goodbye to bricks and mortar.

 ~ The iconic yellow type of the Lei(s)ure Centre, set in Cooper Black ~

I've always gone out of my way to use my body, ever since the day post-graduation that I realised I would no longer a) be walking miles into college carrying stuff or b) riding a bike to my boyfriend's house up several hills, now that I had acquired a yellow Citroen 2CV in lieu of a debt.

That's meant a lifelong gym habit, the acquisition of yoga, a taste for running and in the last couple of years, a twice-weekly early morning swimming routine. When you sit down drawing and thinking and typing all day, if you don't get off your ass now and again it will literally be the death of you. My body might sometimes feel like it's just a thing to carry my head around, but I'll be damned if I let my job do me in.

So me and my Mum and Dad go to Hinckley's defiantly 70s Leisure Centre two mornings a week to smash out as many lengths as we can, then get changed in the no-longer-fashionable open-plan changing rooms, where everyone stands around discussing husbands, politics, jobs and telly in various stages of stark-bollockness. It's reassuring, grounding, and completely delightful.

All that's about to change as the Leisure Centre I watched being built with my Dad, as a small child in 1978, will close on Sunday and be demolished two weeks later. It was never quite right, its construction dogged by controversy - the pool was never big enough, there were alleged shortcuts taken all over the structure, and the concrete was meant to be poorly. But I always liked its awkwardness and slightly heroic feel. It's stood there serving my town for nearly 40 years, ugly, dingy and angular as it is, and this morning was my last ever swim there.

I spent some time in the building today recording details ahead of its destruction. As I walked through what used to be the café I remembered that I once went for a part time job there, in the kitchens, and being asked 'if I could cook'. When I replied 'you mean can I flip greasy burgers and lower chips into a fryer', I was most assuredly not going to be given the job.

As we sat outside in the mossy 'Al Fresco' area I also remembered locking up my bike one night and being groped out of the blue by a mystery man whose face I never did see, because he ran off before I could even shout 'oi, perv!'

And my best mate at the time, Dawn, now deceased, who laughed at the story and told me with fabulous logic 'it's OK Colehole, he probably thought you were a bloke'.

Ah the memories!

Here are some of my photographs from this morning. They show both the wear and tear that are the reasons for its replacement, and the efforts of the staff to keep the place going. The Leisure Centre is Dead! Long Live the Leisure Centre!

The strange red building has always had a beautiful front garden:

Stand here and hear the hum of the mysteriously scary pool machinery below:

The diving pool with its 'moveable floor', the idea of which used to really freak me out. 

It stopped moving a long time ago, and the diving boards were removed years ago. 

Those angles! The place is full of 'em.

SO much concrete.

All quiet.

The last post-swim breakfast, in the outside eating area. 

As far as we know, we are the only people to have sat here in all the time we've been going!

Not about to be repaired any time soon.