A little bit about my Riven Islands poster series...
I'm really excited to see the response to the Riven Islands poster series. They took quite a while to put together and I'm happy that the reaction has been so positive!
If you didn't notice it before, the posters are themselves a bit of a puzzle, so I wanted to do a writeup about the various bits imagery I tried to incorporate into each one. Go take another look at them first if you'd like, because I guess this might be a bit of a "spoiler" in that regard!
Overview
The poster series is based on the style of old National Park Service posters from the 1970s, which had been illustrated by a favorite illustrator of mine named Charley Harper. Harper's style in the NPS posters was to not only give a broad overview of a park's scenic features, but to also incorporate a close-up view of some of its fauna and flora. This often led to his compositions being chock-full of different creatures and plants almost to the point of feeling busy, but it also gave the pieces an incredible sense of depth despite their flat, almost paper-cutout graphic style.
Crater Island »
Right off the bat with Crater Island, you might notice that I incorporate a few things not seen in the actual game. In the foreground next to the familiar "ytram" is an outcropping of an unseen flowering plant, and floating in the air above the water is a butterfly—perhaps migrating from another island.
Below you see the familiar lagoon, with the catwalk and pipes that make up the island's boiler puzzle. You see the top of the boiler, which I use as an opportunity to incorporate Gehn's crest as an engraving on its rusty roof.
In the water, you see a few fish of some unknown variety. They appear elsewhere in-game only as Rivense petroglyphs—their forms beneath the water here appearing the same. The biggest departure I made with the piece is that the Moiety have visited the island and destroyed some of the books that Gehn had been making there, leaving behind a scythe as a symbol of their presence.
Lastly, if you look at the center of the lagoon, you might see the watchful eye of Gehn looking back at you.
Prison Island »
Prison Island is perhaps my favorite little island in the game, but is also one of the least fleshed-out in terms of detail.
I struggled to come up with plants that I could recall seeing on the island, apart from the massive tree trunk that gripped it. Animals were even harder to come up with, but I knew that Gehn had been keeping a collection of moths and butterflies in drawers in his laboratory. If Crater Island were Gehn's lab or study, then Prison Island surely held some of his most-studied subjects—not just the butterflies, but Catherine as well.
I depicted the island at night, surrounded by twin moons reflected on the mirror-still water. Catherine's lamplight attracts the night-flyers, and so Gehn captures them out of spite. To me the butterfies represent Catherine—while she's imprisoned, she's also the most free.
Like with Crater Island, there are eyes everywhere.
Temple Island »
Temple Island is perhaps the most aesthetically-driven of the series. Rather than load it up with depictions of scenes, it depicts artifacts or images from the island.
In the foreground is the telescope, backed by an abstract depiction of the fissure with it's starry expanse. Below is the water, with the "eye" sphere that Gehn found floating around, and one of the fish seen elsewhere in Riven drying in the sun.
Above is the island itself, aligned with the sunrise and depicting the link-in point, a marble dome, and the great giant dome above. In the distance you can see Catherine's prison.
Perhaps the most interesting thing for me, however, is the "flitter." I took one of the petroglyphs and fleshed out the design, surmising that perhaps the hummingbird-like creature could be found around this island.
Finally, you might make out the ever-present eye of Gehn in the shape and alignment of the star fissure with the telescope. He's watching.
Survey Island »
Survey Island might be my favorite of the bunch. The look of the location itself is just incredible and moody and I adore Riven for its use of surreal imagery like that of an underground throne room.
I wanted to elaborate on that aesthetic as much as I could, and so I incorporated the red light into the scene, casting a glow on the surrounding stalactites and stalagmites. In the center sits a wahrk—a symbol of Gehn's power over the Rivenese islanders.
While the space in the game is of course a cavern with a window, one might also see in my depiction a globe, held by Gehn's hand and watched by his omniscient eye. The red light is his lordship over the wahrk and how he trains it to be his tool of oppression. He holds it in his grip and by extension he holds all of Riven hostage.
Jungle Island »
Jungle Island is perhaps the richest island in the game, so far as flora and fauna are concerned. While the other islands often left me struggling to find creatures to add to the posters, I actually had trouble this time deciding what not to add in.
I opted to follow Harper's NPS examples more closely for this poster, adding in a foreground with plants and flowers and bugs to help imply the sheer depth and size of the island.
Below, you see a Sunner in the cove, surrounded by tree ferns. Behind it is the path and beyond that one of the many cliffs that are characteristic of the island. Behind the cliff, I hint at the presence of the lagoon, depicting the top of the warhk gallows and the control tower (another symbol of Gehn's oppression) and the village.
In the background sits the dwindling jungle, appearing as arms reaching out to grab at the golden scarab beetle (and other bugs) fleeing its destruction.
I hope this gives a bit of insight to my thought process while making these posters. Enjoy!
