Piquing Interest

Piquing Interest started as a project for Character Development & Design II (VCD 40095), an illustration course I took during my undergraduate experience at Kent State University. The prompt was to depict a building on a rocky pinnacle with specific lighting. This original project was not tied to any specific genre; I was inspired by the perspective-breaking works of Shaun Tan, specifically The Arrival (2006), as well as the background illustrations of Maurice Noble for Looney Tunes.

As time passed and I continued my research projects after completing my undergraduate degree and honors thesis, I built fictional settings in which to test the roleplaying game I had designed and continue to design. One of these settings is the Gliderspace, an arid landscape whose unusual terrain is produced by elemental magic, lifting the stone of the land into the air, constantly shifting the landscape and the the culture of the people living there. For this concept of unusual geography shaped by arcane gales, I returned to the aesthetic of Piquing Interest (2018). For a land full of inhospitable magic, the warped perspective and use of light of the original project made a world evocative of our own but still inherently fantastical.

These projects are both Piquing Interest. They are at the same time, individual projects that can stand on their own and the evolution of my technique from 2018 to 2020.