Fable

The initial sketch was done with my Wacom Intuos tablet in the art program Paint Tool SAI. When I was satisfied with the sketch, I moved it into Photoshop CC 2017 to work on. Pretty much all of the image was done with the pen tool, creating shapes and arranging them to match what I wanted.

The "orbs" were created just using a shape tool, and then I made a "style" to try and mimic how I remember the orbs looking in game (glowing balls of glorious EXP).

The guild seals in the corners were originally one giant guild seal, however I disliked how it looked, and so turned them into "pins" of sorts for the map in the background. The map is a copy of the Albion (where the games take place) world map from the Anniversary edition that was released in 2014 (much higher resolution). I put a stained-glass filter over it so that it would be visible, but not distracting.

Fable was released in 2004 for the original Xbox, and developed by Lionhead Studios.

I think Fable is one of the few games I actually managed to finish when I was younger. Some of it I think was because I had never seen anything like it before -- sure we had some Bioware games that were also RPGs (Role-playing games), but those didn't give you near the freedom Fable did! Though there was no shortage of games at the time that had the "alignment" mechanic -- again a popular choice for Bioware, even continuing to more modern games, even if it's hidden.

In fact, Fable was one of the games that made my younger self decide I wanted to be a game designer! So it's had a pretty big impact on me over the years for sure.

One of it's main features was the alignment system, which tracked how you behaved through the game, even what you ate tended to matter (I remember tofu gave you "good" points, while eating baby chicks tended to give "evil" points for obvious reasons). There were also three sets of all of the armors -- one for "good", one for "evil", and even one for "neutral" -- as in it didn't effect the alignment at all. Most of it was just if you were trying to boost your alignment one way or the other, but it still was neat to try and finish your collection of pieces and have all versions of all things.

Of course, being an RPG, there had to be ways to track your experience so you can level your character, and so entered the experience orbs: red for strength, yellow for skill, blue for magic, and green for general EXP.

The icon in the four corners was the Guild seal -- a reoccurring object through the games, as it was a way for the Guild of Heroes to speak to you (magic cell-phone of sorts), as well as a quick teleport if you needed to be somewhere fast.

The sword is the Sword of Aeons, which was tied to a very dramatic moment at the end of the game -- it was the best weapon in the game, you had to make a choice: save your sister and lose the sword, or sacrifice your sister to get the sword.

Using the sword as the "split" between the different sides I thought was fitting, since it's tied to an extreme choice at the end.