Appendix 3: Concept Art

The Making of a Hero

Our concept artist (Sidewelter) was instrumental in developing an overall vision of the scenario from which the author (Sidewelter) would work. Here, you are lucky enough to see some rare unreleased sketches of the formation of hero/anti-hero/jerk Silven, though we clearly don’t know what unreleased means.

Sidewelter: From the outset, we wanted Silven to embody that classic RPG warrior look. After a few weeks of brainstorming, we just knew he had to have a head, some arms, legs, a sword and a load of armour and/or questionable gowns, but as you can see here, it took a lot more work to settle these ingredients into the final formula our author ran with.

Original Ending

Any narrative worth bothering with is invariably hacked out from a rat king of dead ends and false starts, inspired extensions and brutal shortenings, worthless wanderings and mindless meanderings. It is only the conviction of a ruthless editing team which stands in the way of good idea devolving into something like this story.

Sidewelter: We once had an alternative ending in mind for our project, which would have taken place instead of the chosen outcome of part 3. I saved the storyboard for this idea as a reminder that things could have turned out rather differently for our hero. Of course, I scribbled it all out in a huff when the author went down an obviously inferior path of his own, but I’m sure it still provides a fascinating insight into our creative process.