Necrobiotic Core Book
Job: Lead Layout & Graphic Design, Editor
Creative Director: Mitch Bustillos
Additional Illustrators: Fatti, Rana Gainer, Kyllian Guillart, Haley Perry, Nellie Sorenson, Samantha Terry, Qin He
Lead Illustrator: Haeli Lee
Additional Graphic Designer: Taylor Price
Logo Designer: Jennifer Brazas
Necrobiotic is an original dystopian roleplaying game set in an alternate universe Italy in which people have figured out how to reanimate the dead to facilitate everyday life. I came on board to do the layout for the core book, as well as the Kickstarter Quickstart Guide, which is a preview of the game for prospective backers to check out before pledging their money towards the project.
Although the game was adapted from an Italian version, I was given free reign to establish the style of the book without needing to be too faithful to the original. The goal was to dance the line between being futuristic and retro; to be dark, textured and creepy, but not a full-blown horror. My first step was to create a moodboard and presenting a variety of image references to make sure the creative director and I were on the same page. Once we landed on our rusted metal, found-footage & torn paper aesthetic, I codified everything in a style guide and hit the ground running.
One of my favorite parts of this project was designing the character sheet. It encouraged me to use my sensibilities not only as a graphic designer, but also as a game designer to create something that would be help a player organize and reference the information they needed to engage best with the game. It was also my first time commissioning specific artwork for a project; In keeping with the game’s theming, I thought it would be cool to incorporate some visuals of gears alongside the various character stats (not only does the game evoke a lot of mechanical imagery but the original system the game uses is called the gear system). I provided the creative director with an extremely rough concept illustration, which was then passed on to the artist to create the beautifully rusted ornamental gears that feature beside each skill. I was blown away to see my idea rendered in such vivid detail!
I also had to come up with a creative way to feature all the backer portraits throughout the book. I ended up sourcing some old-fashioned picture frames and dropping all the portraits into them using Photoshop. I thought this was a very pleasing and unobstrusive way to incorporate these non-diegetic art pieces while keeping with the antiquated aesthetic and allowing me to pepper them in throughout the book.
Finally, I had to set up the cover for print, including separate layers for the embossed title & spot gloss effects, which are indicated in green.