But unlike the adult in this strip, Calvin’s dad actually APOLOGIZED for yelling at him when he saw how guilty his kid was:

Some up-close details. I am so proud of how this turned out! It was a challenge bringing the concept to life. I had to reference my own ship first, and draw wireframes of all of the spirit homes (plus a few duplicate kitchens and the mill), to then arrange them in a way that pretty much echoed the game's building mechanic but in the shape of Stella's body instead of flat base free-form.

This meant keeping their relative size true to in-game proportions and also making weird sacrifices to fit them all in a way that filled out the silhouette without breaking its shape too much (I ended up having to play favorites - uncle Atul and Alice got the shortest end of the stick, despite my best efforts. Jackie and Stanley and Bruce and Mickey are front and center though!). This process took FOREVER (I have 30+ hours on this canvas, half of which was just this), and that was before I got to detailing the individual facades. I have a somewhat good breakdown of these steps in my instagram story highlights.

Once this was over I knew the idea had legs and I had to finish it. I made an unfortunate mistake and whitewashed Stella in the sketch phase, but thankfully during my numerous screenshot dives I managed to actually look at the sprite up-close and adjust. The hat was a similarly tricky idea, in that I wanted to fit EVERY spirit's constellation around her head, including her own and Daffodil's at the very top. Here I cheated a bit and traced the star arrangements to maintain their characteristic and relative shapes, after which I fiddled with their scale ever so slightly to fit them in a way that was understated. I really wanted them to look like a random nebula at first glance, only discernible on a closer look.

The rest was truly gravy and kinda drew itself. I racked my head about including Daffodil until I realized that she was a somewhat rare symbol of Stella's life outside of her service, a distilled point of joy and companionship, so I decided to use her as a mirror to Hades and flank them both as cloud formations behind the main shape. Life and death united in balance.

That sort-of mirrored the larger controlling idea behind the concept as well; non-diegetically speaking, Stella IS the ship. The homes she builds are the memories of the folks she cared for, their passing having left these rooms vacant and forever etched in the vessel of her life. She can only grow around and carry them along. But her ultimate service and love is to death itself; to the very nature of impermanence. That is what she holds nearest and dearest. The Everdoor cradled gently in her hands.

The video opens a door to an outside industrial plant-like area. Snow is on the ground and there is otherwise some miscellaneous noise of factory work going on.

Then the person behind the camera lets off an “OooOOO AH AH” ie the typical monkey sound.