Art Book

“Hey Chris! We should make a beautiful

looking adventure game where everything is
hand animated and painted. Imagine bringing
this classic Don Bluth style to modern consoles
and platforms.”

“Sounds like a great idea Ben!”

“Can you draw?”

“No… can you?”

“No…”

“But it can’t be that hard. I’ll throw together

some sketches and see where we get.”

“...let’s get some artists.”

2
 The Little Acre & © Pewter Games Studios.
Licensed by Curve Digital Publishing Limited.

4
 Not experienced the adventure yet?
The Little Acre is available for digital download on PC and Consoles

5
 Contents
Introduction 7

Artists 8

Sketches and Concepts 10

The Animation Process 20

Characters 29

Environments 36

Posters 42

Artist’s Miscellany 44

6
 Pewter Games Studios was founded in 2013, and is based in Dublin, Ireland.
The Little Acre is their first title.

If you don't like mild spoilers we strongly recommend that you go and
complete The Little Acre first. We won't accept responsibility for your curiosity.

7
 Artists
Edward Duff

Kate Clavin

Lucy Toner

Maria Aurora Rodriguez

Julie Rush

Sean Cunningham

Sinead O’Regan

Kayleigh Scullion

Niamh Skelly

8
Team Banner

1. Initial Sketch

2. Refine Linework

3. Final Colour and Polish

9
Sketches and concepts

Early sketches of the farmstead.

The environments of The Little Acre are
designed with camera movements in
mind. We plot out the focal points of the
area at this early stage.

10
 A storyboard of
The Little Acre’s
opening cutscene

11
12
13
Early sketches of Merr

14
Early sketches of the Illusion Monster

15
Concept sketches for Bugsy

16
Character height sketch

17
Arthur concept sketch

18
Concept sketch for Arthur’s Machine

19
The Animation process

All our animations begin with a rough

sketch like this one of Adian getting out
of bed. Here we’re looking to get the
right feel and movement for each step of
the action.

20
 All our animations begin with a rough
sketch like this one of Aiden getting out
of bed. Here we’re looking to get the
right feel and movement for each step of
the action.

Once the action is working we then make another pass. Here any mistakes in the drawing are fixed – a miss-
ing eyebrow or a crooked hand for instance.

21
Finally, the drawings are coloured and shaded.

22
A family reunion - the animation process from concept to completion.

23
 Smears make the character, or parts of the character, stretch out across the screen for a frame or two, “smearing”
them across the screen. When played at full speed it will look like the character has moved so quickly they became a blur.

24
25
26
Multiples, as the name implies, involve making multiple drawings of the character or a part of them on the same frame.
This also helps to give the impression of speed. For example, if a character fumbles with an object and they frantically
move to grab it, the animator might draw four or five hands for a few frames.

27
28
Characters

Character sheets help the animators ensure they stay ‘on model’. These reference sheets help provide
continuity of colour, size, appearance and expressions. This is essential in traditional animation
because the character is redrawn every frame. This redrawing could potentially lead to little mistakes
in the character’s features.

29
30
31
32
33
34
The denizens of Clonfira charted by size

35
Environments

36
37
38
39
40
41
Posters

42
 The Little Acre 1.0 circa 2013

43
The artist’s miscellany

44
45
46
47
48
49
50
Thank you for checking out The Little Acre art book (not to mention also buying the game)! This was the first title
that our studio has ever shipped, and as such we put in a lot of care and a lot of work, and learned a whole lot
along the way. Hopefully you can see some of this through the artwork above!

The Little Acre’s animation was hand-drawn, which means that every frame is a separate drawing. We used this
technique for all the characters, as well as most of the effects in the game. It was pretty labour intensive, but we
were left with something visually unique and interesting, and to us that made it all worth it.

One of the things you’ll probably notice is how there are two art styles to the game, due to the nature of how we
wanted to convey the idea of travelling to another universe. What this meant was that we needed two versions of
the main characters – one standard, and one isometric. The isometric world is also where things get stranger,
sometimes being described as a ‘Miyazaki’ world. While this was a nice idea which helped us emphasise the fact
that Aidan and Lily weren’t in Kansas anymore (in case it’s not obvious, they were never actually in Kansas), it also
ended up causing a headache for the animators who had to create the 8-directional movement animations
required for Aidan and Lily - twice. Nevertheless, they managed to pull it off and the game is better off for it. Just
don’t be surprised if we don’t do anything that stupid in future.

We'd like to thank our artists so much for all their hard work on bringing The Little Acre to life. Also, on behalf of
everyone at Pewter Games thank you for supporting us. Really, you da bestest.