This journey began by taking a chance, by reaching out to the developer directly and asking for an opportunity to help submit work for his project; Among the Whispers: Provocation. Initially I planned to story elements for the game which included scenario's for the players to discover, however it grew into visual elements.
Some of these assets went through three or four iterations before we settled on a final design. The letters are a good example of that. Some were too burned, not burned enough, needed aging or needed to be kept simple. Each piece told a different story.
Letters are interesting to create, because you're trying to tell a scene or a story from the perspective of an individual, not yourself. Having to put myself in the shoes of the person that might have created this asset, whilst not having the full scope of the story in front of me was a challenge.
Would they be someone that wrote on expensive paper, would the ink bleed from a fountain pen? What about typeface, would they afford a typewriter?
The newspapers primarily featured one key story relevant to the game plot. The rest was an attempt at telling small town news through the years. I'm happy with how these came out, I used easter eggs from the studio's first title; Conrad Stevensons Paranormal PI, and researched what sort of stories might be found around that timeline.
The goal was to lure readers in, but not distract them. The easter eggs were a nice balance to entice them to keep checking the other newspapers just in case they missed a nice reference.
Newspaper clippings are short, snappy ways to pull attention straight to the main story without the reader having to try too hard to find what's important. The key information is on the front, and the rest of the asset is secondary.
Posters and flyers were a fun challenge. Trying to capture the fantasy from the game, but the accuracy of the time period and weathering you might expect to find on an item that will be considered an "archive" was an interesting twist.
Official documents took a significant amount of work. Using limited tools at the time as a freelancer, I was painstakingly designing the documents in less efficient tools. Eventually, the hardwork paid off, but we certainly learned there are better tools!
