Erik is back with another art update!
“This week, I’m here to talk to you about our Distillery Specialists—in the game, Specialists are one of the two types of Distillery Upgrades you can purchase. They have certain skills and abilities that can modify a player’s game strategy. This specialist is the farmer—you’ll notice the initial grayscale sketch has the farmer carrying a random sack. I hadn’t decided on what crop that should be, and Dave mentioned that we ought to be careful the sack doesn’t look like it’s full of coffee beans (that would be an entirely different game… look for “Percolated” in 2025! Just kidding. Probably.)
Anyway, while I painted the farmer, I changed the crop to be a piña, the heart of an agave plant after all of its fronds have been chopped off. Those of you with any background in Spanish will note that piña translates as “pineapple,” and the agave heart gets its name because after being processed, it looks shockingly like a pineapple before it’s been processed. But the key difference is that they’re huge! It’s quite common to hoist them over your shoulder in this manner. You’ll notice I included a before and after image of the piña, because the first one didn’t quite work. Although many piña are in fact this clean, it was a little too bland to read properly, so I repainted it with a lot more scuffs, color changes, and other elements to give it some more personality.
You’ll also note that the Upgrade cards now use a blueprint background along the bottom, whether they are Specialists or Equipment. In most cases, you, the distillery owner, will be accommodating these upgrades in some way, either through construction or installation—an office for a manager, a space for a Worm Tub, etc. I’m sure I’ll be sharing more of these as the weeks go on. The backgrounds for each Distillery Upgrade will also be customized for each Specialist or piece of Equipment, so the farmer might end up standing in a loading dock next to some crates… but these additions won’t happen for a while, still.”
Evensen out.