Concept Art for Ruhnstone

Hello again! I am Genevieve, a concept artist and modeler on Inkbound. I previously covered the concept for the Gardener NPC. Today I will be going through my concept process for the Shadow of Ruhnstone boss.


[h3]The Shadow’s Lore
[/h3]
A shared element for each of the 3 bosses in Inkbound is that they were once kwills that became separated from their binders due to different reasons. After being separated, each morphed into a chaotic entity that reflects conditions of how they lost their binder and the book they reside in. For the Shadow of Ruhnstone, its separation was due to an unbinding attempt gone wrong in the ruins of Ruhnstone. This resulted in an explosion, causing destruction and death. Afterwards, the separated kwill was abandoned and now looms over the silent, ancient city of Ruhnstone like a poltergeist. It has taken rubble to form a vessel to protect itself from harm. The tale of the Shadow is one of loss and abandonment.

[h3]Concepting
[/h3]
When coming up with a form for this boss, I played around with different ideas of how the Shadow affects its environment and having forms that symbolize its past. Though the Shadow is armored with rubble, it is still a small, lonely kwill. I had the idea that while the kwill controls rubble that it can launch at the player, its body could be contained in an urn-like object that symbolizes the death that took place during its separation. Another idea I had was having it surrounded by different shield-looking barriers or armor, like the kwill is trying to protect itself from the world around it. Some ideas had the kwill look more maliciously mischievous, being more of a vengeful spirit. Other ideas had the kwill looking more melancholic and lonely. I messed with the idea of having the kwill’s body be wispy hands that wind through the rubble rather than a visible white orb. While brainstorming ideas on how the kwill could control the environment, I was inspired by the mushrooms that grow in Ruhnstone and came up with the idea that it could control the rubble with something like spores, making it feel more like an infection.

Silhouette studies for Shadow of Ruhnstone

[h3]Second Round[/h3]

I shared these silhouettes with the rest of the team and they liked the silhouette on the bottom far-left. For this silhouette, I had the the idea that the kwill would not only surround itself in rubble like armor, but also make it look like a large, threatening creature to scare off adversaries. The silhouette has elements that look like bones, keeping with the theme of death that surrounds the Shadow.

Taking this silhouette, I did another round of silhouettes focusing on incorporating architectural pieces that can be found in Ruhnstone and shaping them into skull-like shapes.

The Ruhnstone environment

Some architectural shapes I messed around with were using the arches to make them look like horns and claws. I also used lined up pillars to resemble teeth. While I kept the bulging eyes from the initial silhouette, I had the idea of having magma pouring from its eyes, making it look like it is crying. Since Ruhnstone is an ancient city that goes back to the first age, it has blocks of uhn littered among the ruins. These are also incorporated into the Shadow’s threatening armor. I also added kwillspeak runes to make it feel more ancient like the city it resides in.

Initial Shadow of Ruhnstone sketches

[h3]Finalize and Color[/h3]

From feedback, different elements like the flowing magma were chosen and combined into the Shadow of Ruhnstone’s final design below. The body of the kwill is implanted in the forehead of the armor.

From here I add color. Since the body of the Shadow of Ruhnstone is made up of pieces from Ruhnstone, color is more limited but adjusting the values and tones of the stone as well as which blocks are gold can help make the boss pop from the environment and separate different elements of it’s design.

Color study for Shadow of Ruhnstone

Once the design and color is finalized, the last thing that is needed sometimes is an orthographic turnaround of what the boss would look like from different views. This is necessary if someone else is going to take on modeling the design. This page usually will list any notes for the modeler as well as texturing as you can see below with the runes and crater that can’t be clearly seen from the orthographic views.

Orthographic drawing of the Shadow of Ruhnstone

Lastly, I render out an image of the boss to be used outside of the game.

Final rendering of the Shadow of Ruhnstone

I really enjoyed concepting the Shadow of Ruhnstone because of its unfortunate backstory that is hidden behind its menacing exterior. Hope you all enjoyed seeing my thought process for creating this boss’s design!