The Golden Anvil
 

Plot:
The Golden Anvil is a hand drawn, computer painted adventure game. Occurring in the land of Pelagreen, it concerns the war erupting between the warlord Azaz, who has slowly established a foothold in the Stillveil, and is at war with the Empire of Pelagreen, the governing body of the peninsula. Surrounded on three sides by water and protected from the Barbarian Kingdoms in the north by the almost impassable Anuvil Mountains, the enchanted armies of Azaz are the first threats to arise to imperial power in a millennium.

The Order of the Runesmiths have begun the process of forging enchanted weaponry to counter the magical forces of the warlord, but only a blade of the purest power, forged on the Golden Anvil, can defeat Azaz. However, a new evil has begun to spread across Pelagreen, moving behind the lines of war that the empire has established with Azaz. This new threat is the Black Lich, and it seeks the Anvil and the Blade, as well as the death of all the Smithies.

The protagonist is Kit, who though aware of the war, lives in the sleepy hamlet of Ocenon and is the child of a fairly mild blacksmith. Soon he will be caught in the sights of the Black Lich, who is moving among the smiths of the land in search of his targets.

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The Golden Anvil is an adventure game developed entirely by myself. The release plan is to do a limited freeware release and test the response. As of today, all music is ready to be used in game and in the next few days I will be posting a few tracks from the soundtrack. Penning and painting of the supporting cast will be completed this week, and then backgrounds will occupy the next two months. Though drawn, they have yet to be penned or painted. I present now some details, in sketch and pen form.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_s...1024/Scan4.jpg
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_s...024/Scan12.jpg
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_s...1152/Test3.jpg
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_s...0Test%2019.jpg
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_s...%20-%20JPG.jpg
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_s...%20-%20JPG.jpg
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_s...%20-%20JPG.jpg
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_s...%20-%20JPG.jpg

I also recently began a developers blog here:
http://thegoldenanvil.blogspot.com/

Nice character art! And that levitating guy reminds me of someone I know very well. Best of luck with this project!

Thank you it's much appreciated!

Here's a few more.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_s...%20-%20JPG.jpg
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_s...%20-%20JPG.jpg
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_s...%20-%20JPG.jpg

Hoping for some track demos to be posted tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

Wow, this looks fantastic thegoldenanvil, great work!! :D

For you audio lovers, I present a track underscoring one of the villains of the game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNt3dNc_cNM

May have our title song. Those of you who enjoy mellow, piano work and something with a calming element to it, this is for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyPURnM-CKI

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_s...%20-%20JPG.jpg

One of the people you'll have to negotiate in order to continue the quest.

The theme song in case you missed it before:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNt3dNc_cNM

Any fully colored backgrounds yet?

I'm doing the art production portion by portion, so first was coloring the supporting cast. I've got two more characters to color and then I'll start work on painting backgrounds.

This was partly intentional... My art affinity does not extend to the detailed work of background production and so I've been practicing with different techniques to get a particular look I'm going for. The supporting cast concludes this week so I'd say we're going to start looking at the first colored backgrounds rolling out in about two weeks.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we can be done with backgrounds by June so we can start plugging characters into their scenes.

Although, we're going to shoot for as close to this as possible :D

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_s...e-remnants.jpg

Heads up, if you haven't played The Whispered World, it's gorgeous!

Just a heads up. Just completed my Master's Comprehensive Exam. Coincides with the finishing of my last supporting characters.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_s...%20-%20JPG.jpg

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_s...%20-%20JPG.jpg

At this point, I'm starting work on backgrounds!

Starting work on backgrounds.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_s...912/Cave3.jpg.

Oh how far we've come. Dissatisfied with background work, I went back to work. My artist is colorizing as we speak. Preview, B&W:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-K...ackground2.jpg

I'm awful on the coloring end but she does stuff like this:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-b...151_7654_n.jpg

And finally for your music fix, a heroic theme from the game:

http://youtu.be/oPFpiLSPRgM

My new artist is beginning the long road of painting.

The inked drawing I did:
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-u...s1152/GA04.jpg

Her first pass:
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-X...Untitled-1.jpg

Her second pass:
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-l...Untitled-2.jpg

Still lots of passes to be done and detailing work to be accomplished but we're now underway.

It's nice to see how the various versions a background can pass through change the look. Looking good.

Thanks! :D It's exciting because the background sketches are done and all we are waiting on is the colorization. Once those are done it's time to start actually putting the game together.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-n...Untitled-3.jpg

Incremental but progressing. Like the toning back of the colors, I thought the house was too rich, but the tree is too 'golden'.

Quite educative to see all those phases of background colorization.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-f...Untitled-4.jpg

Desaturated to remove the vibrancy that made the background too strong.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-s...Untitled-5.jpg

I'm not liking her first attempt on the mountains, which look too close. No sense of distance or fogginess. Seems like just a pile of purple rocks behind the house. Still this is her first go at it so I'm hoping for improvements on the next pass.

Right now we're at 70 backgrounds so I hope that's enough adventure game for everyone.