Payback Early Concept Art (Patreon)

The concept of Payback is simple: mess too much with the way the universe works using karmastry, and it's going to slap you.

But illustrating that was harder than I thought.

So began my collaboration with SNAPS. I needed a fresh perspective and I always enjoyed his cryptid art concepts, and his style in general.

I gave him a lot of free rein to take my idea and do as he pleased. That's my style in general when I hire concept artists. The whole point of hiring another artist is because you need a new perspective and fresh ideas... so why hamper them? Instead, you've got to serve as a "creative director" --- picking and choosing from the concepts the artist creates and iterating on them until you get what you want.

I asked him to help me create a general evolution of payback... starting with minor payback which takes the form of little blobs I'm calling "bogies" right now... evolving into worse and worse payback.

Generally, payback in "demon" form evolves this way:

bogies > gremlins > goblins > golems > TITANS

More concept art to come, but it's a great way to see the early development of this core concept for Flux Destiny's magic system