Vagrant Story
Vagrant Story has a special place in my heart. A love-hate kinda place but its there nonetheless. I stumbled upon some videos on youtube discussing the game which gave me a yearning to play it again. Wandering about in the early areas reminded me how much I loved the early game enviroment design, but also how the grid-like movement system and the sort of... almost box based look to the early rooms reminded me of the isometric style scenes I had made before.
And so I thought, why not turn Vagrant Story into a sort of cutesy istometrcish kinda game made of clay?
The enviroments are made entirely from modelling clay (plasticine) on top of a variety of foams and cardboard to provide the structure. Ashely is made from polymer clay as I did not want to try and make his tiny butt out of modelling clay. The Minotaur is modelling clay as he's a big lump and I wasn't really sure of how well I could make him and wanted to be able to tweak him as I went along withe the process. All the props are modelling clay. The wall patterns were plotted out with tracing paper, transferred to rolled out sheets of clay and then indented or raised with tools or by adding extra clay. All the shading is done with chalk pastels either painted on with water/brush or dabbed on with sponges for more intense colour. I have added some 'lighting effects' digitally because they looked a little... flat without them.
A few closeups and details of both scenes. The Minotaur wound up not standing reliably once holding his HAND OF LIGHT and so had to be held up in place by a thick wire lodged in his back, pressing against the wall of the scene. There is also a small glass chunk painted with glass paints to represent the fire in the alcove but you can't really see it in the final shot.