COLLAGE
ATL AS
Penmanship counts
T
he Collage Atlas is a
game I tend to think
of more as a digital
papercraft theateR.
Cut-outs of bushes
and lampposts—each drawn in
black ink using 0.03mm fineliner
pens—emerge from the rough white
watercolor paper ground. Arranged
in layers around a central gap, these
create a garden walkway, leading
towards an intricate, wrought
iron-style pen-and-paper gazebo.“I draw everything on paper then
scan each element,” explains the
game’s creator, John Evelyn. He then
cuts them out in Photoshop and
removes the paper texture. “I take
the bare line art and back it with a
high res photo of a blank sheet of
my paper.”
3D elements work more like paper
construction projects. “I print the flat
UV map outlines (like flattening the
foil wrap off a chocolate Santa), then“Initially people find it strange
that the game world essentially
doesn’t exist until they act, until they
breathe life into it,” says Evelyn. “But
I’ve endeavored to pack the game
with regular payoffs, to encourage
people on their way and make that
seem like a less daunting task.”
Drawing is a liberating experience
for the self-taught Evelyn. “I tend to
think exhaustively about everything,
but when I draw, I don’t. I just let it
turn out how it will,” he explains.
“The more you learn, the less you
realize you know, so I love keeping
drawing as my one deliberately naive
endeavor, it’s fun to do something
entirely free from expectation.”TOP: Old-fashioned
lampposts and
wrought-iron gates
are recurring motifs.
BELOW: The effect is
beautifully delicate.I draw all the detail in, scan that back into the computer,
and wrap the model in the new hand-drawn texture.”
As well as trees, pinwheels and boats, The Collage Atlas
uses text as a physical object in the game. For example,
sometimes letters appear jumbled unless you stand at the
exact right viewpoint. Physical text has been integral to
the game since Evelyn decided it should be a game in a 3D
space and not a picture book, as was the initial idea.
“It just made sense for the text to live within that
space, too—rather than as an overlay. Before long I
realized that if the text were to share the space with the
player then it logically follows that it responds to, and
acknowledges, the player much as the environment does.”
Agency and hope are key themes for Evelyn in this
project. In pursuing those themes, The Collage Atlas is
overtly reactive in ways developers usually try to hide. For
example, assets rotate to face you as you move around, or
move only when you look at them.Pen and Paper Gaming
FEATURE