Jessica Ferren - Night Air's Embrace (2024)
Night Air’s Embrace is a project I started in university, a game concept inspired from the Black Death. It's a set of concept art illustrations combined with 2D motion graphics tailored specifically for game content; encompassing elements like game menus, log-in and start screens of a horror survival video-game.
Jessica Ferren - Night Air's Embrace (2024)
Hello! I’m Jessica, a soon to be graduate from Arts University Bournemouth’s BA Illustration. I specialise in environment design and I have always wanted to be a concept artist, but recently I’ve gained a new interest in animation and have been incorporating motion graphics into my illustrations. This project is a way to challenge myself to find ways to make what concept artists are making but better, given my own skills.
Thank you for looking at my entry!
Sounds are mostly from FreeSound.
Softwares: Adobe Photoshop and After Effects
Night Air's Embrace
“You find yourself stuck in a mysterious rural ghost town that rejects modern technology.
Like a haunting journey through time, the echoes of the past linger in the dilapidated buildings, fog-covered streets, and disturbing visions that blur the lines between reality and nightmares. These abandoned settlements, once full of life, now stand empty and lifeless, a failure of presence that become eerie reminders of bygone eras.
There is something wrong with the air that permeates through the strange village, literally.”
Desolate Room (Game Menu)
The Path to Church
"The church would board up houses with infected families inside, marking the doors with strange red markings that oddly emitted a metallic smell. This served both as a warning to others and as a measure to contain the disease by trapping the sick inside."
Plague Doctor's Hide-Out
A merchant/shop concept.
“In this lifeless village, a solitary figure remains—a doctor teetering on the brink of sanity. With the eerie silence as his only companion, he has resorted to unconventional measures to stave off his crushing loneliness. Adorning a skull with makeshift adornments and paint, he has fashioned a macabre semblance of a loving partner.
Yeah, he's a little coo-coo, but he's also more than happy to help a stranger like yourself. Eccentric and perhaps a touch unhinged, he nonetheless extends a warm welcome to newcomers, eager for any semblance of human interaction.”
Ghouse's Farm
The Flagellants' Parade
"Within this forsaken landscape, a cult known as 'The Flagellants' roams. These figures, bearing traits akin to both zombies and parasites, lurk beneath tattered cloaks. Their sinister mission is to propagate a mysterious miasma, convinced it heralds divine judgment.
Driven by a fervent belief in an imminent Rapture, the Flagellants preach a grim conviction: 'All must perish, that angels and mortals may ascend to the heavens hand-in-hand.' Their fanaticism has transformed the once-thriving village into a lifeless husk, its streets hauntingly empty.
As the protagonist navigates this labyrinth of shadows, they confront the chilling reality of the Flagellants' reign and unravel the secrets veiled by the town's darkness. Their quest for escape is fraught with peril, as they must contend not only with the physical dangers of the cursed village but also with the spectre of fanaticism run amok."
Rapture's Ritual
Process
Inspired by the dynamic login splash art animations of League of Legends, I adopted a similar approach by creating animated illustrations using Photoshop and further developing them with motion graphics in After Effects, which prove to be an effective way to captivate viewers compared to static images. It became a strong catalyst for my recent works as I transformed my concept art illustrations into fruitful atmospheric and emotive live environments, by adding depth to static character/environment illustrations and transforming or adding motion and effects to certain elements.
Breaking It Down
I start by illustrating the environments first. Once finished, I merge down the layers and keep the ones I specifically want to add motion to, separate. Here’s how they look as simple illustrations!
Planning
These are animation breakdowns consisting of png layers, effects (e.g. particles, fractal noise, rainfall, etc) and video overlays! Cutting up, cleaning up parts and preparing all the layers is the "best" part of animating; really crucial procedures before I start adding motion to them using puppet tool, warp, transform, etc. I love coming up with innovative ways to animate certain things. Figuring out how to animate the leaves being blown away by the wind was fun and as you can see, this one required a LOT of layers.
Mind The Gap
This project was originally a continuation to another project I had called, ‘Mind The Gap’. I decided to make this into a new independent project, and that’s how we now have ‘Night Air’s Embrace’!
Mind The Gap was purely experimental.
"Amidst a spectral apocalypse of possessed rats and grotesque demons, a young journalist becomes trapped in an underground train station. Seeking the truth, they navigate sewers and tunnels, discovering a rift that transports them to the 16th century. There, they uncover the origins of the ghostly invaders and must confront ancient terrors to save their world from a fate sealed by history's darkest secrets."
If you got this far, thank you very much <3!
I'm always looking forward to new opportunities and meeting new people! So please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or just want to talk. Thank you again!
email: [email protected]
Comments (13)