Greed and Ruin | Alfie Bramley

The Hayden family is cursed, or so Alistair Hayden claims. Many years ago, in order to save his dying business and transform it into one of the leading fashion houses in the world, a deal was struck between Alistair and an ancient, powerful being. Now it has come to collect, and no one is safe. Only Ruby, an adopted daughter from one of Alistair’s sons, is trusted to see the real danger the family is in. Can she piece together the scattered clues of the past in time to save everyone? Be wary of who is around you, and choose your options wisely.

Greed and Ruin is an in-progress visual novel, created by Alfie Bramley, Victoria Grunberg and Stephanie Redwood.

I act as the artistic lead on Greed and Ruin, taking care of the concept art, the character designs and the finalised assets.

A great deal of my inspiration for the colouring and style comes from the watercolours of GRIS, by Nomada Studios (a fantastic game which I highly recommend you try for a beautiful visual journey). Due to the insidious nature of the game's antagonist, controlling everything behind the scenes since the very beginning, the game features a very watery palette: mostly shades of blue, with only a few standout points of orange, brown and green. Each background also features a rising red tint: both to make the character sprites stand out during dialogue, and to indicate a rising danger beneath the words the characters exchange. Their lives are on the line, and its only a matter of time until they realise.

On this page, I will be displaying and categorising the various pieces that have been made for this project so far. As the background of this project is rather extensive and the created game story is a work in progress, be warned that this does contain spoilers for the plot, so read on at your own risk!

Firstly, way back when, came the initial concepts. These are my attempts to figure out the different ways I'd want to illustrate, but also the various shapes and forms that would be interesting to use. The concept of the character who would eventually become Priscilla Hayden was a bit of a muse for this stage, alongside the antagonist...probably because she's by far the bitchiest and most over-the-top, so if anyone would be this extra, it would be her.

This first piece was an experiment to try different art styles. I received a very nice piece of advice from my supervisor, Dexter Phillips, which was to envision a single word that summarised the whole game, and then use an art style to serve that.

These four each represent a different word, for a different overall game: blue is loss, yellow is betrayal, red is deception and grey is narcissism. I really wanted to try and push myself in terms of my artwork: one of the things I really struggle with is harsh shadows, so the red and grey ideas were particularly hard to wrap my head around. Conversely, my favourite one to do was blue, as I loved the idea of the game being very dreamlike...ultimately, my final decision was a blend of both red and blue.

After the overall art style was somewhat settled on, I spoke with Victoria, the lead writer, and we both decided that the first concept to be finished should be the antagonist. We were unsure for a while exactly what form this antagonist would take, but we knew that whatever form it had would be foundationally important to the fashion and stylisation of the characters and backgrounds.

My initial ideas focused on classic angelic depictions, looking at how a person possessed by an angel could look, and then the angel themselves. As beings of divine power, they do not need to be confined by normal body shapes, and so I tried to experiment more with abstraction.

This abstraction served me pretty well when we finally decided that the antagonist would be an eldritch being, not dissimilar to Cthulhu from H.P.Lovecraft. However, I was in charge of writing this being's lore, and I loved the idea of it being simply a very very old, natural creature, and so I took inspiration from vines, roots, and pictures of cells under micropscopes.

The idea was to create a living being that is fundamentally plantlike in nature, as opposed to humans being animalistic. This would both make it a natural 'opposition' to the main characters, but also allow me to make it look uncanny. Sea creatures were a great influence, as living in the ocean gives rise to many uncanny looking creatures.

To my surprise, my initial design was both my favourite and the favourite of the team. It was a very good surprise though, because it meant I could make a start on concepting rough ideas for silhouettes for clothing, and even how a possessed person could look while under the influence of this being.

These initial rough sketches have ideas for jewellery, clothing, and even the silhouette of a victim of this being; flayed and hung upon a light fixture. The visuals of the clothing having holes in them really put me in mind of modern ripped jeans: to avoid simply making repeats of popular fashion, I tried to go more into classic 'gown' silhouettes, and expanded on it more later.

These designs were my attempts to marry practical clothing with couture fashion, using the silhouette of the being as inspiration. I'm still rather pleased by these, but these silhouettes don't really seem to be of the modern era, which is the time that we had by now decided we wanted the game to be set in.

This wasn't so much of a problem though, as now these concepts could be used as an example of what to maybe stay away from: modern women don't tend to wear gowns or hats like this unless they are very old-fashioned, which could be useful for a specific character or two, but the other women would dress a bit differently. Not a mistake: simply an opportunity to learn!

Feeling good about the progress on fashion so far, I decided I was overdue in finalising the design of the being. This piece was done by photobashing: I took lots of pictures of vines and ivy and tree trunks, cut out the interesting bits, and then stitched them all together into a new shape. In particular, I used pictures of limestone from Lindisfarne that had worn away due to rain, making these beautiful organic shapes, and used them for the 'cloak' of this being's body.

The overall shape is aquatic, but the body is plantlike, and looking at it, it appears alien. You can imagine it being kind...you can also imagine it being repulsive, and that is exactly the impression I wanted.

Having finalised the being, I could also now finalise the silhouettes of the fashion. I took abstracted shapes from the being's body, and used them as the base shape for constructing these sheets of designs.

From right to left, we have the claw, the cloak, and the spiral (modelled on the being's legs). The challenge I set for myself was to make clothing designs based on these shapes, bearing in mind the other aspects of the being's form. I hadn't sat down and designed outfits quite like this before, and it was honestly rather fun! I did particularly enjoy making clothes that draped over the figure, because I could imagine a bitchy person like Priscilla casting them over her shoulder or such.

A very valid critique I received of these designs is that they seemed very fantasy-based: they would be more at home in a setting like Lord of the Rings or Skyrim than in a modern-day murder mystery.

This is very fair: it could be contested that characters like Priscilla would happily dress as fantasy princesses because that's how entitled she feels, but I think Priscilla would be the most modern, at the cutting edge of new fashion, not trying to make an old look fashionable again. However, these designs are still very valuable because there are other characters that could fit them, and once I've tried going super elaborate, I can scale these designs back into more reasonable aspects.

This final page of clothing concepts is a blend of the previous two sheets: attempting to marry together the most interesting parts of each concept to create a new overall look. This is my favourite sheet, because the central design on this page is what would become Priscilla.

I felt this design was the best blend of ridiculous couture, modern clothing standards, and ladylike glamour: not perfect on its own, but the best place to go from when designing the characters. I was told it looks like an outfit a singer would wear on stage, which is perfect: Priscilla has the most extravagant design of all the characters in the introduction of this game, and she would totally wear a singer's look.

The next step was the proper character designs. While I was a little rushed at this stage in development, and thus unable to iterate much on each character, I had a fantastic source of references for each character thanks to Victoria's writing. Victoria had made an extensive sheet for each character that detailed their motivations, vices, aspirations, pretty much everything that I could possibly need to fit a look to them, and while I had put so much work into the more elaborate outfit designs already, I knew that I needed to make a good template to fit the family's faces to. Thus, the first character I drew was Lyle: the eldest son of Alistair, father to Priscilla, and next in line to run the family business.

The reason I went for Lyle first was because I felt he would be the epitome of the family's 'business' side: professional, cold, collected, cunning and sleek. This would then be a good mirror to reflect all the other characters off of.

In essence, Lyle is the face of the family's fashion business, and is all but running it already, and this is reflected in his straight posture, smart business suit, well groomed hair and the overall sharpness of his silhouette. His head is tilted back so he is constantly looking down his nose at people, befitting the status he commands and the power he wields. The only hint at his age is the lightest wrinkling around his eyes and over the bridge of his nose, which only serves to make him look more like the classic businessman. It's difficult to see this man as vulnerable in any way...which is exactly what he wants.

The next character following Lyle is his daughter, Priscilla. In a similar position of status, she instead reflects the family's focus on aesthetics and the veneer of glamour and beauty.

Her silhouette is the exact opposite of her father's: relaxed and over the top. Her earlier design work shines here, with the frills and needless holes and bindings, simply there for show: exactly like her as a person.

After the prime father and daughter of the family, the next characters are reactions to them. The first is Lyle's younger sister, Lorraine. A recovering addict, who lost her position as the heir to the business after causing them massive losses, she is haunted by guilt over what she did, but it never occurs to her to do better.

Lorraine is trying hard to keep face, especially in front of Lyle, and so she is wearing her absolute finest, more elaborate than even her brother's suit. Beneath this finery is a woman who is barely keeping herself upright; hence her unkempt hair, and her body language of literally trying to hold herself together. Lorraine is the face of failure: the family's shame, who in turn only failed because she was never given the support she needed. She is aware of her and her family's shortcomings but makes no effort to change anything, and thus for her failings, she is the first to fall victim to the Nameless One's murderous rage.

The next character is Lorraine's son, Andrew. A self-proclaimed advocate for all that is good and right, vocally in opposition to everything the Hayden family stands for...slightly undermined by the fact that he has never had to work a day in his life, thanks to the family fortune, and he can't go anywhere without his gold wristwatch or his eye-wateringly expensive haircut.

Andrew is the representation of privileged youth, vocally rebelling against his family yet unable to actually extract himself from them. Visually, this is represented by the fact that even though he wears different colours, he still bleeds into the blue colour that is iconic of his family. Also, I intended for him to look like the most obnoxious, annoying person you could ever meet, with a moral superiority complex that is evident even from just looking at him. Believe me, this man is worse than Priscilla.

The final two characters are the protagonist, and the source of all the family's problems: Ruby and Alistair Hayden, respectively. Ruby is golden and red and orange: complete opposite colours to the rest of the family, which is both a big

positive because it sets her apart from the hubris and toxicity of the Haydens, but also means that she is

denied any sort of acceptance or respect. Alistair, meanwhile, is the pinnacle of the family's finery, dressed in a blue silk robe that flows like water over him, his pale skin and faded hair cast in a light blue glow that makes him look ethereal.

The two are polarised: Alistair, as the source of the family's problems, is ghostly and emotionless, almost Christ-like, while Ruby is the only hope for the family's salvation, smiling and standing in bright contrast to the dreary blue around her.

Alistair is water and air: Ruby is earth and fire.

Ruby and Alistair were designed last of all the characters, which sounds counter-productive, but doing so meant that I had the perfect frame of reference in the other members of the family. Andrew, for example, actively tries to be different and opposed to his family, but is ultimately still as bad as them if not worse, and so his colour palette is only marginally different. Priscilla, Lyle and Lorraine consciously make an effort to look striking in the family's fashion.

Alistair is effortless, because he is the patriarch: everyone is a reaction to him, except for Ruby, because while she wants to be accepted and regarded as a Hayden, she is just different, and that is her saving grace. The moral of the game, told through its visuals, is that you do not want to be a Hayden. You want to be a Ruby.

After the characters, the last thing to do for the game to finalise the main visuals is the backgrounds. These were a bit of a challenge for me...gestural environmental concepts are fun, finely detailed environments are tricky, and these had to be well crafted because they would each be in the background for a good deal of gameplay.

To help me along the way, I dusted off my copy of The Sims 4 and spent a few hours struggling to remember how to make a square room. Once I figured it out, I got to work making a layout of the house and decorating the rooms, before discovering the Free Camera option and making liberal use of it to get these POV shots of each of the spaces.

The first room I tackled was the lounge. I felt this would be one of the more important rooms, because it is both a place of relaxation and showing off. It would also contain a good number of challenges that I would need to tackle in the other rooms: therefore, it would be good practice to get to grips with the process.

I began by tracing border lines about the room to create flat planes that I could then use to transpose other objects onto. Some of the objects I traced over, because...work smarter not harder? Is that a good reason?

The next step was making some decisions regarding the overall aesthetic of the room. Given the aquatic/plantlike form of the being, I liked the idea that even the furniture would be themed similarly, showing how much influence this being has had over the family since the very beginning, and so I started by designing a frieze of shells and seaweed-esque shapes for the back of the sofa. The shape of the backrest was inspired vaguely by the inside of a clam. To make it a little more spooky, I made the curtains by the window flutter, as if caught in a breeze.

After these first few outlines, I decided it would be good to try and add some values to everything, to really try and start bringing out the 3D look of it. This would also allow me to start experimenting with light, and where I would want things to be in order to maximise the atmosphere.

The main thing I added here that I really wanted to keep in the final piece was the light from the window spreading across the floor. I felt this was a really nice ambient touch that would pull the whole space together, and I used this as a base going on.

Using the previous piece as a base for scale and overall lighting, I added the rest of the outlines and did some rudimentary shading to establish light direction and value. I made more patterns, based around plantlife and water once again, and I decided it would be a nice touch for all the flowers in their various pots to have leaves falling off of them, giving a slight hint that Alistair has not been taking good care of them for a little while due to his failing health.

Rough values established, all that was really left to do was finish them properly.

The finished background of the lounge has finer detail on all of the shading to grant the room more of a 3D feel, and a rising red glow has been added to make the room feel more dreamlike and atmospheric, as well as providing a good contrast to characters who stand in the foreground. This was very much inspired by GRIS's watercolour work, and the overall look of the room is very pleasing. Most importantly, however, it is not too noisy, and because there is not much colour variety, it blends into the background easily, letting characters be the focus.

This process was repeated for each room going onwards. As of the introductory demo, there are four rooms that the player will see: the Main Hall, the Lounge, the Library, and Ruby's Bedroom. Each was constructed in a very similar way: a 3D base that is then drawn over and made various shades of blue, finished with the rising red glow. Each room has a history and a purpose, and each serves well to frame the characters who are within them.

Here we have the lounge as it appears in-game, with the lovely and very likable Andrew and Priscilla inside. Priscilla is very at home, even bored by the events that have transpired at the house, while Andrew doesn't want to be anywhere near her and so is up and about, pretending to read something intelligent so he can avoid interacting with her in any way.

Andrew doesn't seem to fit into the room the way Priscilla does: but then, she embraces her heritage, while Andrew is visibly standing out from it. Or so he says.

Here we have the library with Lyle and Lorraine. Lyle is up on his phone, talking to some very important business people, or the police, or whatever else he's doing that clearly needs his attention. Lorraine, meanwhile, is sitting on the sofa, eyes turned from the light outside, hunched over hugging herself, feeling terrible over all that has happened yet making no effort to lighten the load on herself or anyone else.

This symbolises both characters very well: brother and sister, yet isolated from each other...even now, they refuse to reconnect.

This is Ruby's bedroom. Once a storage room behind the bathroom, hence the watery pipes along the wall, it was renovated into a bedroom for her at Alistair's request when his son Harold adopted her.

The existence of this room alone is indicative of Alistair's kindness and fondness for Ruby: it is messy, the messiest room in the house, yet that makes it look actually lived in and cared for, while the other rooms are sterile places that serve to impress others or boast of one's wealth.

No room boasts of the Hayden's wealth more than the Main Hall. This is where guests are brought to show them the true extent of the family's power, and where the influence of the being can be felt the most clearly. The staircase is modelled on the Grand Staircase from the Titanic, as it was so luxurious and decadent. The water feature flowing beneath the stairs is just turning red as Alistair's blood flows into it, and as more of the family die, more blood will fill it until it is bright crimson. A fitting end for the room that highlights the hubris of the family better than any other.

The artwork I have produced for this game so far is all artwork I am proud of. I plan to continue working on it once my MA is completed, and I am very much looking forward to realising my vision for places like Alistair's secret room, or his studio. Thank you very much for reading, and if you'd like to play the game, here's a link! (Page via Itch.io)