Fun & Games—for Grownups, That Is!

September 15, 2020

I created the following symbol illustrations for an online slot machine game titled “Quest in Wonderland.” We often create games based on existing pop culture fiction—this one of course, is a reinterpretation of “Alice in Wonderland.” The challenge is to come up with characters that don’t look like the familiar icons that everyone would recognize—this is necessary. At the same time, there’s no mistaking who each character represents.

I still do my character drawing on paper, not in the computer. Many of my contemporaries draw directly in the computer and then begin painting (digitally) on top of their drawing. I prefer to either scan my drawing or photograph it using my phone then bring that drawing into Clip Studio Paint to do line work, followed by Photoshop for the color.

Background paintings can be a challenge. I have a few techniques I use depending on the situation. I built the base game background of the warped room in 3D using Maya. Most of it was rendered as a gray model and then painted in Photoshop. The distortion to the room was also done in Photoshop. The pattern on the floor is a texture that was applied to a flat plane in Maya and then rendered. That was the best way to get a convincing perspective on that floor pattern. I could have taken the floor texture and “eyeballed” it in Photoshop by scaling and distorting it, but I think my method gave me a convincing result without having to play around too much.

The red wall background below the room was entirely created in Photoshop. It was a much less complex and quicker solution than the warped room. This background was used behind the slot reels during the free game feature. It’s often good to give the two backgrounds very different characteristics so it’s very obvious to the player that they’re playing free games rather than playing the base game.

All images are for the App House of Fun and are property of and © Playtika Ltd.