This bed’s design perfectly captures that old-world aesthetic I’m aiming for in the room design. These carvings along the wooden frame – especially those floral patterns gives it an authentic Victorian look (I make my own texture for it anyway but that was the idea). It’s the kind of bed you’d find in an old relative’s guest room, which plays right into that uncanny familiarity I want to create.
Went with this higher elevation off the ground – creates this perfect dark space underneath. Classic horror design, giving players that instinctive urge to check under the bed while simultaneously dreading what they might find there. Those decorative legs with their curved design add to the vintage feel while creating interesting negative space. As you will see in the showing of my development further on, I try to create a feeling of unease by reducing instanes of potential comfort.
The door placement behind the bed creates a great tension mechanism. Using the bed as both a visual anchor and physical obstacle that gets disturbed really plays with player expectations. That slow door push will create this gradual, physical intrusion into the space – you’ll actually see the safe space being violated as the bed slides against its will.
Advancing from where I was in the project from this screenshot, I end up moving the desk lamp and table to the other side of the bed. This was to all the bed to move far enough to be visually significant and to also allow for functionality in moving around the room. I don’t want to limit the player’s movement, it’s a core mechanic and would feel clunky to take away.
I found a screenshot showing the carpet I was thinking of using! (scrapped it, didn’t serve a purpose really)
Moving onto more relevant things, I AI generated a map for the bedsheets, running it through a custom GPT and using the black+white generated image to produce a normal (https://www.smart-page.net/smartnormal/) this site is a LIFE SAVER. I love how the light bounces off the sheets, but I wasn’t too happy with how uniform it is. To remedy this issue, I vertex painted the sides of the duvet and reduced the normal map saturation+contrast where I painted so that the creases and folds appear in the middle but not the edges.
I enjoy the idea of having the bedsheets depict an event that can be interpreted or be used as hints at an overarching story.
Looking at this vintage toile pattern for the bedsheets, I chose it specifically for how it subverts traditional pastoral scenes. The repeating imagery shows these quaint scenes with figures in period dress gathering under palm trees, but there’s something unsettling about using this in a horror context. The faded beige background and weathered quality already has this aged, almost sickly tone that works perfectly for my environment.
Taking some inspiration from the story of Icarus, which has some ties to the story I want to portray in “Burlap Friends!”. Alongside some Doctor Who weeping angel vibes, I drew two poses for a character I want to add to the photo, replacing the three girls in the distance. I tried my best to replicate the artstyle here.
Digitally coloring in these figures and using some other digital techniques to closely mirror the vintage Toile style. Working through the process of bringing this character to life – started with the rough pencil sketch. The sketch has this raw, loose quality that captures the movement I wanted. Those scraggly line marks in the wings ended up working really well for suggesting that rough texture even in the initial drawing.
The character doesn’t fit incredibly well in the texture here, but I layer fabric and imperfections/ grunge on top to where the difference isn’t noticeable.
The implementation of this toile pattern into the scene required some careful consideration. I started by addressing the UV mapping – and had to scale the pattern appropriately so those scenic repeats weren’t too obvious when applied to the bed model.
Crucial part was getting the scale right in-engine. Needed the pattern to be clearly visible when players approach the bed, but not so large that it loses that wallpaper-like quality from a distance.
The intention is to have the texture change over time, signifying the progression into the night as things get more and more intense, slowly revealing to the player that there is something more at play here…