The Evil Capacitor

Hello everyone!

Here we are again this week for a new article. As I’m in charge this time, and to not deviate from the rule, we’ll talk graphics today.
And not just any graphics. We’ll talk about posters.
Whether propaganda, advertising, government information, they had an important place at the beginning of the 20th century. Moreover, they were collected a lot at that time and it was not uncommon for posters to be taken off the street to be sold, exchanged or kept in a private collection afterwards.

In Lethis – Path of Progress II the posters will be used to provide historical context and information related to the background of the Lethis universe.

To avoid too much spoiler and because we’re still a little early in the development of the game, I’ll focus this article on a propaganda poster featuring Professor Franz Alström.

Before focusing on the graphic aspect, a little background point is necessary:

Professor Franz Asltröm is an eminent scientist of the Empire. During experimental research to discover an inexhaustible source of energy, Alström succeeded in creating the STOLE prototype. A pressurized steam capacitor that releases a colossal amount of energy.
Interested in this revolutionary invention the Emperor sent a military detachment to the professor’s workshop to supervise the end of his research.
Just as the prototype was being started, instability in the machinery claimed the professor’s life, no trace of which was ever found in the workshop probably sprayed by steam under pressure.

Since then his invention has been reviewed, improved and miniaturized so that each city is finally equipped with a capacitor. The latest innovation consisting in condensing steam in capsules, a kind of very high energy batteries deployed in factories, machines and automatons.
But the automatons were at the root of the problem.
They gradually invaded the bourgeois houses, serving as servants, then replaced the workers in the factories.
The unemployed workers eventually rebelled and turned the automatons against the Empire.

The “Automatons War” then broke out, resulting in a social revolution within the Empire and forcing the government to relinquish power to the workers.
The automatons were declared illegal, confiscated and destroyed. The trauma was such that condensed steam was now seen as an evil necessary for the functioning of cities, an evil power capable of creating great catastrophes.
In order to calm the population a culprit was appointed: Franz Alström. Even though the latter had long since passed away, he who embodied scientific progress and the freedom of peoples now became the very icon of the mad scientist. Obnubilated by power and destruction with his infernal machine.

The government, to obtain a lasting social peace, set up a propaganda campaign to blame the scientist and thus absolve itself of any responsibility. But little did they knew…

And now it’s time for pictures!

I will not dwell on the process. It’s long and complex (Sinsem’s note: and boring). I’ll just show you the step by step of the character:

As you can see, I first work with solid color before putting the shadows and lights.
I tried to give Franz Alström’s character a machiavellian pose, in order to reinforce the idea of presenting this illustrious scientist as a bad person.
The machine in the background is the first prototype of a steam capacitor.

We could find it in our abandoned MMORPG project “Steam of Lethis”. Its demo was supposed to tell the adventures of Franz Alström and his team:

Now on to the finished poster! Tadaaaam!

Obviously the poster is not used as is in the game. It will have to be modified so that it can be integrated. I’ll show you what it looks like:

Of course other posters will be scattered throughout the game and other details will make your city more alive than ever.
We are also looking for a way for you to enjoy all these details of the game in HD. Maybe on the menus. Anyway. Not everything is set in stone, far from there as you can see!

I hope that you liked this article, and that it allowed you to delve a little more into the universe of Lethis.
At the moment we are trying to find a viable financing method for our project so that we can work comfortably. We’ll keep you posted in the coming months.

Feel free to comment on this article to tell us if you would like to see the posters in HD in the game, or if it should instead be in a separate artbook.
Also join our community on Discord, we are already over a hundred and it’s super cool!

In the meantime, enjoy the summer sun and we’ll see you soon for another blog post!

Tchu!

Noodle