Category: Night Witches

Interesting thought, the comparison with Space Alert (or Escape From the Forbidden Temple, etc – cooperative systems-thinking games) hadn’t occurred to me!

Initial sketches for the two new pieces from RST Longmore are completely amazing. Rich has the ability to take general art direction and work it up into dynamic, precisely composed pieces with energy and pathos. And that’s on top of his technical accuracy, which was absolutely essential to me for Night Witches. Dude knows how to draw an airplane, but he’s an artist. And a professional – always with accurate estimates of time, always on time, always ready to make adjustments, all with a great attitude. 

I can’t wait to show off his new work for the game! It’s so good. 

To whet your appetite, here is my initial art direction:

1. A trio of PO-2s with dashing stripes flying in bright daylight in peacetime, over fields of wheat or other idyllic landscape. Planes have “НКЗ СССР” or “Наркомзем СССР” written on the sides – they are agricultural crop dusters. The pilots are women – perhaps one’s hair flies free, and the navigators behind them are men, flight instructors. The women are ecstatic, waving to one another the men are taciturn.

2. Night. A PO-2 dominates the frame, a tangled upside-down wreck, barely recognizable. The pilot hangs upsisde down from her seat, dead. The navigator, helmet off, is pressed up against the wreckage, a Tokarev pistol in her hand. Silhouetted against the horizon, bathed in moonlight, seen through a gap in the wreckage, a pair of armed figures approach, their outlines indistinct but menacing.