“It’s the perfect amount of creative challenge”: How we made the Hades II artwork

After the critics got their mitts on Supergiant Games’ first Hades entry, it was rightly acclaimed as a masterpiece, and not just for its stellar gameplay. The title took the studio’s signature art style and infused it into the tales of ancient Greek mythology, with the result an eyeball-satisfyingly engrossing way to tell its narrative.

This May saw the early access release of its sequel, Hades II. Supergiant’s art director Jen Zee and her team have hit the spot again, introducing brand new protagonist Melinoë while evolving the look of the original’s cast of deities.

In her role as Supergiant Games’ art director, Jen Zee has defined the studio’s
visual style since its first release, Bastion, hit the shelves in 2011, and her distinctive character designs for Hades have been central to its success. We caught up with her to discuss the process of delivering a contemporary twist on ancient Greek mythology, revisiting old friends, and creating powerful female figures.

Greg typically provides me with a short blurb on narrative context and personalities he thinks are in service of the game, as well as my favourite part: something we call the ‘tonality stack rank’. This lists the top three tonal qualities we want a character to embody at a glance: is a character meant to be scary, funny, easy-going, sad? And so on. Since we have a cast of over 30 characters, it’s important each be distinct, and this helps provide a clear way of setting them apart. For example, Odysseus’s tonal qualities were ‘rugged, cool, neighbourly’.

Once we have those ducks in a row, I get to drawing, and touch base with Greg as necessary to clarify any details. It’s really important that both of us are happy with the final design and feel they satisfy our narrative, design and artistic goals.

One of the most important aspects though was for the character to look like someone that Melinoë, who is an accomplished witch herself, could look up to and learn both magic and martial skill from. As witches, they wouldn’t have the big, bulky muscles of a weightlifter, so I remember trying to incorporate the fierce, poised agility that Muay Thai fighters often exude.

As for Aphrodite, unlike in Hades, where she was probably lounging in a hot spring on Olympus the entire time, she and the other Olympians are now engaged in all-out war against the forces of Chronos. She’s geared up, weaponising her most powerful abilities as accessories to make it clear that she means business. Aphrodite takes to the battlefield in the Trojan War according to The Iliad (Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem), so she’s definitely no stranger to getting her hands dirty.

This content originally appeared in ImagineFX magazine, the world’s leading digital art and fantasy art magazine. ImagineFX is on sale in the UK, Europe, United States, Canada, Australia and more. Limited numbers of ImagineFX print editions are available for delivery from our online store (the shipping costs are included in all prices).