#frozen wilds

So a while back I fell in love with the art style of Joey Chou and his inspiration Mary Blair. In particular I had found a storybook version of the it’s a small world song/ride with art done by Joey Chou. I thought it was an utterly adorable and visually interesting an art style, so I got the book even though I was at a rather higher reading level than the book’s intended audience. 😉 Ever since then I’ve wanted to do something inspired by that art style, but my own art skills at the time were woefully insufficient.

But now I feel my skills have improved enough to give it another go, because I loved the idea of doing a series of pictures representing the different tribes of the Horizon games in a style like the one from my old book. So I’ve been having fun playing around with making my own version of this art style!

So the big picture plan for this series is to make one picture per tribe, each showing either their capitol or their most “representative” settlement, filled with characters from that tribe/settlement. Aloy will be in every picture too, wearing an outfit from that tribe of course. I decided to start with the Banuk, using Song’s Edge as their settlement. I figured their simple tent architecture and triangle motifs would translate well to this art style and make it a good place to start as opposed to something like Meridian.

At the time of posting this, I’ve finished making the main background (I still need to add a couple details like the cheiftain’s tent), Aloy, Aratak, Ourea (though I may rework her headpiece), Ikrie (my fav so far), Sekuli, and the storyteller Shaman. I’m currently working on Burgrund and Naltuk, and I’m planning to also include at least the Hunters Three, preferably also Laulai, Inatut, and possibly Gildun. Oh and possibly Varga as well, even though she never shows up at Song’s Edge. But she is cool, and then I have a good way to slip all three of the special Frozen Wilds weapons in as well.

However, I have also distracted myself working on other parts of the project in advance, including the Nora/Mother’s Heart. I’m replaying HZD now so I thought it might be nice to work on that while the Nora characters and settings are top of mind. So there is the chance Mother’s Heart could end up completed first.