'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 It didn't fit my slightly out of date notion of 'gaming'  - despite being a fan of such beautiful contemporary games as Firewatch, Hohokum, Poto and Cabenga and the strange Papers Please which are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

'Identity' at the Ten Two Gallery

I went to a private view last night, one which, unusually, was held in my home town. A ten minute walk was refreshing ('private view' usually means a car or train trip to London or further afield) and the little gallery, Ten Two, where I used to have a studio a few years ago, was filled with people and the smell of warm bready things and coffee. (I should mention the gallery has its own cafe, very cosy with very large sandwiches.)

The work was 'Identity', the NHS Open Art Show 2009, which is touring. It's art by people who have suffered or still are suffering from health difficulties, with an apparent emphasis on mental health problems, whether currently in treatment or not. Some people had never made art before, some were postgraduate creatives, but the art was linked by an urge to communicate, express, explore, or deal with something personal and important.

Take 'Painting Mum' by Jan Welch. This is the one that had me standing in the corner in my unsubtle canary yellow rain mac trying not to show the reddening eyeballs. (I apologise that the iPhotos here are further affected by the glass reflections) Terribly moving in its simplicity, Jan had painted her Mum in a simple and realistic way, through three 'screens' of colour - pink for the positive outlook she retained throughout her life, grey for the Alzheimer's which eventually claimed her memory (but not her spirit) and yellow for the fear she felt 'most of the time'. In addition to this, the artist had painted over the photographs of the woman's three children, because the Alzheimer's eventually meant she forgot who they were.


Jack Shotbolt's 'Threadbare' is an ordered but frantic weaving of thick paint, a deep mesh of luminous colours and powerful strokes. This is a close-up. Of it, Jack says: 'In recent times I have repeatedly found myself in turbulent circumstances beyond my control that have rocked my world. The only constant has been my need to make sense of all this change by making paintings'.

This one I didn't record the artist for - sorry - but the position of the figure says it all. And the light. And the face...

This one I wanted to buy - but it was sadly the only one marked 'NFS': 'Covered ID' by Lou Woods (ID as in identity, or 'id' as in Freud?)

These delicate bowls called 'Change' and 'Gone' were made by Maggi Gamble after her mastectomy; tiny and fragile, they really needed no further explanation:

There were many others worthy of mention. Mat Brandford's 'The Gift And The Curse' was his first ever piece of artwork - a brave move then, to show such a thing in public - after 20 years of struggling to know 'which face to wear in which circumstances and with which people'. He had a past which included 'bullets' and a 'Teflon-coated' career in crime, and his brutally honest drawing shows his continuing struggle between the two 'faces'. I wish there was somewhere else online you could see all these - as there were plenty more I'd like to have mentioned.



This wasn't artwork shown for its awards, slickness, or clever concepts. To be presented with such raw and honest expressions was humbling and a little moving, and made me happy for the artists (to have such an outlet) and sad that they had cause to work in this way, though the resulting work was often beautiful. Some actually saw their mental / health problems as a gift, and chose to celebrate the different-ness it gives them. But mostly, it made me appreciate how lucky I am never to have been affected by such issues, and aware that one is always only ever a hair's breadth away from them.