Developer Interview: concept art and sneak peek on Rescue Quest’s upcoming update from Francis Monge

Rescue Quest lead artist Francis Monge gives us a sneak peek of what’s coming in the next update. Check out this developer interview for exclusive art and other info about the making of the game.

Q: Hi Francis! Can you tell us about yourself?
A: I’m Francis from Quezon City, Philippines and I started making art for games back in 2010. I joined Boomzap as a 2D artist in May 2014 and was first assigned to another game called Super Awesome Quest before I was transferred to Rescue Quest, which has been in development since 2013. The team needed some help with various art tasks such as characters and backgrounds.

Q: How would you describe the game’s art style?
A: During my transfer to this project, I got the chance to see the game’s art style and when I first saw the characters, it reminded me of old cartoons I remember watching as a kid like The Smurfs, Fraggle Rock and Paw Paws, where you can see pencil strokes from the animators without the straight vector-ish lines that some cartoons use today primarily due to the modern tools now available at our disposal. Having this approach for me creates soul and breathes life to the characters because of the human touch involved – just a personal opinion though. Despite taking inspiration from some older art styles, I felt it was also injected with some current trends with modern themes and visions. Spells and some effects were inspired by styles popularized in Asia.

Q: Which part of the game did you most enjoy creating?
A: Creating characters are the most enjoyable part for me. This set of characters were studies for Boom’s Christmas costumes. I had fun doing them and got carefree while working on the third concept with Jack Frost as inspiration. 😀 We can’t use that of course, so we proceeded with study B. ^^

I also enjoyed making background decals, which are the individual elements used as decors that populate a level and define a region’s personality or theme. For example in Deepgloom Grave, it’s all about making tombs and spider webs. I made this set of decal concepts for one of the upcoming regions, but I can’t reveal what it is yet!

Q: Speaking of regions, how do you make each one different while maintaining the overall theme?
A: Making each one different while maintaining the theme is basically done by keeping true to the style set before my time on this game. I reviewed the game as a whole and analyzed what it wanted to communicate or show visually. The heart and soul of the game’s story is about the two characters, Boom and Zap. My next move would be to continue to create new elements for the game that suits and supports the style of those two characters and revise old materials that were not. As for concepting new regions, we do our best to come up with themes that are different from each other but still in harmony with the world the game already has. For example, being set in a fantasy medieval world, it’s unlikely that we will be doing modern robots as enemies. But we really aren’t afraid to break the rules so who knows ^^

Q: So what’s next for Rescue Quest?
A: We have been working on fun content for our first ever update! There are new monsters and interesting regions lined up, which also comes with new challenges. The update is coming soon so please continue playing and sending us your feedback. Thank you for inspiring us to do better and helping us grow as game developers.