"Torborg loves the stories her mum tells her before bed. She tells her stories about the mighty gods of the Northern skies, the sweet little Nisser of the forest and the towering trolls of the mountains. Torborg is fascinated by the creatures in her mum’s stories, and therefore she decided that she wanted to go out to see them for herself. But from here, things go downhill… Torborg’s family were farmers and hunters, and their main source of income came from selling potatoes, carrots, milk, fish and fur pelts but one day when her father went out hunting, he came home empty-handed… It was as if the animals and fish had suddenly disappeared. But her family knows who the culprits were… The trolls.

Torborg is worried that her family will lose all their profit from the farm, and she decides that she will hunt the trolls down in order to get the animals released back into the forest where they belong. She packs her backpack for the journey through the forests, hills and fjords and one night when her parents were going to bed, she sneaks out.

You play as Torborg exploring Nissedal in order to get to the Trolls’ mountain, on your journey you will encounter creatures that will give you clues on how to get to your destination, but you can only obtain these clues if you can solve their puzzles or do a favour for them. When you do get to the mountain, you will have to save the animals and release them back into the wild again." 

This is the story of the game that I have been doing concept art for over the last month. The idea of the game was inspired by my background in Norway and how my family lived surrounded by the beautiful nature of Norway. Here is some of the processes I went through the create the concept art for The Little Troll Hunter.​​​​​​​

This was one of my first sketches I did for my Nisse characters That I was happy with. This specific design was not finalized in the end. I got the ideas for the design by researching Norwegian Nisser and how they are portrayed. I made a Pinterest board to spark my creativity and from that point on I used my own creativity to work out the proportions of the character.

This was a concept for a younger Nisse design based off of the previous design, this one made it into the finalized designs.

Here are the final sketches I did of my Nisse characters. After I was pleased with the general design of these characters, I then went on to doing finalized digital versions of the characters. 

This was my final design for my first Nisse character with and without shading. I wanted to portray his innocence by using simple rounded shapes. The colours I chose were mostly earthy as the Nisse is supposed to live in the woods and in barns. I then went on to do a finalized design off of my Female Nisse design.

During the final design stages of her, I made the decision of getting rid of the detailing of her apron as I felt that it took away from the simplicity of her character design. I wanted her to have a very friendly and kind look to her as she would be a helpful NPC for the player to interact with in order to get hints and tips from in the game.

I then went in to do the concepts for my main character. I wanted her design to portray her youth, innocence and energy.

I brainstormed three different designs for her. One with a single braid, fringe and a dress to be worn at a farm, possibly lower class. In the second design she has a sharper look to her hair to express her energy, she has a headband in order to keep her hair away, and two braids. She is also wearing a Traditional Norwegian Telemark Bunad. (Telemark is the county in which she lives in as Bunads are regional) Bunads are very expensive so this design would most likely be for her being working class or middle class. The third design was a bit more practical as she's wearing trousers rather than a dress. I drew her with a rope in order to show that she is very active and might climb over obstacles. She has shorter braids, along with her fringe from my first design.

I scanned in the second piece of concept art I did of her and coloured her in digitally. I then tried to figure out the general colour pallet I wanted for her.

Here is the finalized piece of Torborg. I decided not to draw her in her clothing as I wanted to focus mainly on her physical design. Although, I did very much like all three designs I did for her outfit earlier on, I would say I prefer number 1 and 2 and those would most likely be the ones she would wear during game play.

After I finished Torborg's design, I wanted to create one last character design, this time for the antagonist of my game. The trolls.

This design was a little too frightening and therefore I had to work on new ways to simplify the design and make it more appealing for a younger audience.

At this stage I had gotten feedback from friends and peers on what designs they preferred and I made notes of the reasons why and moved on to doing a slightly more detailed sketch of the winning concept.

This was the finalized digital version on my troll character which in the end ended up being one of my favourite designs. It was very much inspired by the trolls in Norwegian folklore and fairy tales and I wanted to make sure that this design would portray that.

These are my four final character designs for my game The Little Troll Hunter. Working on the concept art for this game has been a lot of fun although it has been stressful, it was definitely worth it in the end.