Searching for Artists

The Mistgate campaign setting is a Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition compatible campaign setting and supplement that is being written by Sean W. Quinn.

The world of Mistgate is one of robust scientific and technological discvoery throughout the Guild Marches fueled by a renaissance of magic. The guilds explore the Mists beyond the veil of reality, defend the people from monsters of darkness, and delve into the depths of ruins to uncover the lost history of the world.

Are you interested in illustrating and making art for games? The Mistgate team is looking to expand and is in search of talented artists to help bring the campaign setting to life. Artists who join the team early on will have an outsized influence on the artistic direction of the Mistgate campaign setting and have the ability to leave a lasting mark on the artistic style.

Sean Quinn, the writer, designer, and editor of Mistgate has been working with Dan Dudley and PJ Morand—Mistgate's art director—to create an expansive set of illustration briefs to help our artists understand the direction that we want to take the art of Mistgate.

We're looking for artists with a few different talents:

• Graphic Designer. We're looking for someone with strong graphic design skills with an interest in games, in particular we're looking for a graphic designer who can help us create a logo for the Mistgate campaign setting that will leave a lasting impression.
• Character Artists. If you like to draw characters, we're looking for someone who can help us bring life to the myriad of peoples who call the Mistgate campaign setting their home.
• Environmental Artists. Do you like drawing towns, idylic scenery, mountains and other land-or-seascapes? Do you like to imagine what an island floating amidst a sea of mists would look like? The realms of the Mistgate campaign setting are expansive and infinite.

If you have one or a combination of the above talents please reach out to us! Our team is still small, and most of us are volunteering our time on the project. However, we are interested in finding quality artists to help us realize our vision, artists who share the same love of games and stories that we do. We are committed to paying our artists fairly, and want to establish a good relationship with a handful of artists who can help us give form to Mistgate.

Below, you'll see some of the art that has inspired us when we think about how to portray characters and environments in the Mistgate campaign setting. All of these are copyright of their respective artists, and are displayed here as reference. We also dive into our thought process some, discussing our sources of inspiration and why we are leaning in the direction that we are.

These are only guide posts along the road to get us to Mistgate's own artistic style. We may find that, along the way, we deviate significantly from some of these ideas as we interface with artists and establish the look-and-feel for Mistgate.

Character Art

We are looking for characters in the Mistgate campaign setting to have an illustrated feel to them, our vision has been inspired by comic books, video games, and digital paintings. The art style of Akihiko Yoshida, Tsubasa Masao, Pat Lee, and Sana Takeda's work on Monstress have all been very influential in defining the vision for character art in Mistgate projects.

We believe that if we can find the right mix of a comic-style illustration with a semblence of realism that we can capture our readers imagination. We think that this will help to enforce the magical elements of the setting and the other fantastic properties, including the mix of magic and technology.

We want to avoid going too far in the direction of Japanese manga or Korean manhwa art styles. Some characters (such as the kit, which have foxlike qualities) may skew closer to these art styles, but Takeda's work on Monstress and Yoshida’s work on Ogre Battle and Final Fantasy XIV contain examples of how these characters can be rendered with common qualities found in manga and manhwa while still remaining visually distinct from mainstream elements typically found in those works.

Warlands, the Exalted comics, as well as some of the grittier art drawn by Kentaro Miura for Berserk are also inspirations. The team has also pointed to Pathfinder's art style as a reference as it bears many of the hallmarks we've identified. The Pathfinder Community wiki has a fantastic article discussing Paizo's approach toward defining their art style through the rendering of their iconic characters.

You will notice a few images have a more painterly feel to them, this is a style that we've discussed pursuing in some character paintings as well as in renders of the environment.

Environment Illustrations

We’re leaning towards a rougher style of illustration for our environments, one that evokes an impression of concept art or painterly aesthetics. This isn't to say that we're eschewing crisp, clean, highly detailed environments: there is a place for those as well. However, similar to the logic we've presented for why we're pursuing a particular style with our characters, the design team feels that a rougher style of illustration for Mistgate's environments allows the reader creative freedom. Freedom to let their imagination run wild and shape the setting as befits their game. We feel that too much focus on hyperrealistic elements or too much attention to detail could impair that creative expression in the games that take place in the Mistgate setting.

Also similar to our character design inspiration, much of our inspiration for how we envision the environments comes from video game concept art—as one might expect. In particular concept art for Final Fantasy XIV and Guild Wars 2 stand out as representations of the style and feel that we’re looking to evoke. Jeff Brown's art has also influenced our inspiration on how to render the environments of Mistgate.

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Art is such an important aspect of a game, it helps to bring the world to life. When paired with the written word, art can be a powerful means of creating emotion for a scene, or to underscore the expression of a story's narrative. There is so much potential and so much to explore in Mistgate, we hope that you're interested in exploring it with us!

If you're interested to learn more about Mistgate and our art direction, and would like to explore opportunities to work with the team, please email mistgate@alkaemic.com