The below gallery is the initial images for a set of tabletop RBG cards that I was commissioned to draw. The brief was for art reminiscent of the original HeroQuest or Fighting Fantasy black and white art which was right up my street given that I’d grown up with those illustrations.
The Castle of Confusion
Knightmare lives rent-free in the heads of many people of my generation. I didn’t get to watch a lot of weekday kid’s TV when I was in primary school, but Knightmare was an exception and it captured my imagination like few other shows. A unique product of its time, I also own the first 4 tie-in books and David Rowe’s ‘The Art of Knightmare’ featuring the paintings used for the backdrops in the scenes.
I discovered isometric drawing paper via the Paths Peculiar account on social media and wanted to design a fantasy dungeon map. Looking for inspiration, Knightmare seemed a clear choice. I made a list of all of the locations from the first 3 seasons which I feel had the most creative designs and reconstructed them. The journey through Knightmare castle was different each time and actually represents an early prototype for what is now the roguelike videogame genre. This meant that there was no official order for the chambers, though I kept them roughly to the 3 distinct ‘levels’.
A colour version is also in the works.
You know when you draw a picture in a particular style and then completely forget how you did it and can’t replicate it? That’s what’s happened to me with images like Dustwalker that I drew using Rebelle.
The original Fighting Fantasy books’ success was – I think – at least in part down to the fact that Jackson and Livingstone were fortunate enough not to have to use children’s illustrators. And so kids of my generation had books marketed at them with cover and interior art that was all dark fantasy of the type that your mum would disapprove of.
