Behind the Scenes: Eris Online Art

Dear Erisians,

This is Cathy, the Art Director for Eris Online.

First of all, I would like to thank you for expressing interest in our game. Although the game is still in its early stages of development, I hope you have enjoyed our creation so far.

We are all impatiently waiting for the full game release, but I hope you can take some pleasure in hearing me share ideas about how and why Eris looks the way it does. Of course, if you enjoy reading it and would like to follow our latest updates, you are welcome to join our forum to be part of our development.

Over the past few months, I’ve been working on finalizing the overall art direction and vision for Eris Online. Our website and forum have been re-designed, and the key art for Eris was finally completed, which I hope will bring you excitement and a sense of what Eris is all about.

Without further ado, here is the creation process behind our art:

Eris’ Theme

When I was brainstorming for our key art, I had 3 things in mind: our core gameplay, Eris the greek goddess, and a unique and yet familiar style.

Our vision is to create a world where you can build your own cities, conquer others’ territories, and carve out your own map. Large scale sieging and wars will be inevitable, hence the image should be about conflicts.

Eris, who is the sister of Ares (the god of war), is the goddess of chaos. In Homer’s version of greek mythology, Eris was known for throwing the Golden Apple of Discord at an important wedding where all gods were invited but herself, which eventually lead to the Trojan War. On the golden apple, it was engraved:

For the fairest one.

I won’t bore you with all the details of how the Trojan War began, but the apple caused conflicts among three iconic and important Greek goddesses—Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite—all of whom believed they were ’the fairest.’ The conflict was practically unresolvable, and it became the key cause of the greatest war in greek mythology.

In Eris Online, we imagined that Eris also threw a golden apple into the world, and she is waiting quietly for you to fight for your territories, cities, guilds, or even pride, dignity and friendships…

Lastly, the style. I must admit, it was largely driven by emotional reasons: a desire for hand-drawn feel and a tiny bit of weariness with medieval high fantasy.

Therefore, we decided that we would reignite the medieval dark fantasy theme with characters that are not commonly seen in medieval fantasy—vampires, minotaurs, centaurs, avian-humanoids and even demons. Each race has its own strengths, weaknesses and traits. We want you to be able to role-play characters that feels unique only to you and Eris.

I understand that as of now, we only have early Alpha demo with partial basic gameplay to present to you, but we hope you can see our determination for Eris Online and interested in becoming part of our project.

Soon, you will be able to build your base, claim territories, produce high-level equipment and engage in PvP battles. We will continue to keep you updated with our latest progress. Stay tuned!

Cathy, Art Director