This is a weird one: this week, I’m posting rough portraits into which little effort was made (these are “push the button and we’re done” portraits), alongside what was done with those portraits.
We’re also opening up the Game & Hobby section of this blog for occasional posts on those topics. Distant Era itself will remain strictly photography, but the All Worlds Traveller will meander into other topics from time to time.
The Context
In 2020, I had my “black-and-white birthday,” in which all the things I was given were black-and-white. One was the new Wardruna album, Kvitravn and tickets to their concert (both of which were long delayed with the pandemic), and the other was Escape the Dark Castle, a game featuring black-and-white card art reminiscent of the oldschool Dungeons & Dragons adventures from the 1970s and 1980s that I grew up with.
This cooperative game takes about thirty minutes to play and requires no prior rules explanation. All it really requires is good dice luck and the fortitude to endure your character being slaughtered by horrible monsters and traps over and over again (unless the aforementioned luck sees you through). It has its own atmospheric soundtrack, is small and portable, can be played solo, and it’s a blast.
We loved this game so much that when the science-fiction followup, Escape the Dark Sector, was released in the fall, I snatched it up, as well its awesome ‘80s synth soundtrack.
The Portraits
Themeborne, the company that produces these “Escape the Dark” games, launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund expansions for Escape the Dark Sector, introducing android, alien, and psychic characters, and a wealth of other cool stuff. One of the add-ons you could select was a commissioned portrait of yourself as a prisoner of the Dark Sector or the Dark Castle, drawn by the game’s artist and composer, Alex Crispin. The portraits would be delivered as both digital files and printed, playable characters in the game. Such was our enjoyment of the game and its aesthetic that we decided we had to have them.
Themeborne sent us guidelines for the photos. For example, the Dark Castle characters face right and the Dark Sector characters face left. I used one hard light and a V-Flat background in order to turn over portraits that emphasized the hard shadows I hoped would be best as guides for illustration. Themeborne’s guidelines also reminded us that we’re prisoners in these pictures, so no smiling. This is why my own portraits have weary expressions.
Escaping the Dark for Real
This week is officially our Escape from the Dark Year. Today marks two weeks since my second shot of the vaccine, and Liz will be in the clear by the week’s end. Last week, I posted a photo of the 2017 eclipse and reflected on an eclipsed year. In what is perhaps an even closer metaphor, this week I’m thinking of escaping a year of confinement and gathering with others (hopefully to play the Escape the Dark games with ourselves as characters).
Check out how Themeborne transformed us into playable characters in the games!
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