Britney Brimhall brings Quest for Glory II's Character Portraits to Life

They say it took God six days to create the heavens and Earth. Creating a gaming world takes a lot longer; it also requires the efforts of many more people than merely one. I feel privileged to have worked with such a talented team of artists. On the Quest for Glory II VGA project, I worked on various art assets, from animations to background concepts - but my main contribution was bringing life to the characters. Being a lover of both Sierra classics and Disney classics, I've always found great joy in artistically developing characters. Because of this, it was a really huge honor being able to recreate the entire population of my favorite gaming series of all time. I wanted to keep the characters true to the originals, but also add enhancements and my own spin to each as well. Additionally, after visiting with the Coles in their Northern California home, we got to see some drawings that were intended to be included in the original Quest for Glory II, yet never made it in. We were sure to take reference photos of these drawings and include them in the game as well. It could be said, Quest for Glory II VGA is in a way truer to the Coles' original vision of the game than the original! Over the years, many people have asked how I go about creating characters for our games. Well, I've finally developed a brief tutorial explaining how I create an image from concept to completion. I'll break it down into a recipe of sorts, although my technique is always evolving with each new project - but hopefully you'll still be able to take something useful from this!

The Character Portrait Creation Process

Click on a step to see details.

Meet the Artist

Britney Brimhall is an award-winning artist who has worked as an artist and programmer on many Adventure / RPG projects. Subsequently. she pursued her own interests in game development and co-founded both AGD Interactive and Himalaya Studios. An active member of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA, she has previously spoken on the topic of successfully managing projects remotely. She understands the core concepts related to game making and, more importantly, the hard work and dedication required.

Britney is a Diva with the pencil. You can join her in our community forum! We've opened a thread discussing her award-winning artwork and character portraits.