A postmodern replica of a JRPG
The art brief converged after months of studies. A painted world, a drawn hero, and the drawing sometimes fails.
The browser game of 2025 was a pixel-art JRPG with battles, quests and a story about a simulation. The Godot build of September 2026 turned the same town into native 3D, and it played, but it looked like what it was: boxes with textures.
The studies that followed tried painted 3D, illustrated 3D, a character study of Kai, a graphics benchmark. What came out of them was a sentence rather than a technique: a postmodern replica of a JRPG. A painted world, a drawn hero, and the drawing sometimes fails.
The references that stuck were Kaiba, the towns of Final Fantasy IX, and Sable. The courtyard above was the first painting made under the brief, and it has been the reference for the courtyard ever since.