Jan Pospíšil

I wasn't kidding about Funny Little Face.
(actual smiths, pls don't come for me. I had half an afternoon to look up how this stuff works, roughly.)

To the Gwerni, Tefnet is one of three divine brothers. The ancient Barrowfolk worshipped Knefnes, or Knéph Nassa - the Queen of Twilight, who rode a chariot dragged by two wyrms through her fields of pale Aspadala flowers.
Curious.

Yeah, basically much of what I did in my work on Glorantha in the past came from a similar place. I think. Man, remember Glorantha? :D Anyway, Kromlech is not quite the same level of sprawling weirdness, but I'm trying to inject some of the bronze age coolness into it here and there, where it fits.

Kromlech has a Morrowind-like equipment system. Here's the first armor concept I did - pretty unusable in the end. There's elements I'd still like to go back to, but at this point (three-ish weeks on the job) I just didn't understand what the RTL system required. (gonna do a short thread:)

And sure, I'll post another Kromlech concept, one of my favourite props I did: the shrine of Tefnet, our god of the Underworld, the master of dragons and earthly fire.

1) There's too much stuff everywhere. You can do that if you have tons of artists working in parallel, not so when you have one overworked gear artist. Also those knives/daggers/bits on the belt are a nightmare for animations, even if you have a dangly system (we don't)
(pic: later, closer variant)

2) A character might have one to three (usually) gear sets, so those need to work in any combination. BUT - most of them from all chars need to combo well on the player character! We had to trim the player versions a bit for that to be ever possible, without designs ending up too samey/segmented.

Straps I wish we standardized/reused earlier. Clothes on the upper body are a pain, hard to combine stuff over. Fur=great, fuzz of the hair hides lots of clipping even in motion. The amount of work this needed was staggering. All done by Filip (who made the anvil).
(pic: gear compatibility table)

And here's how the first comp. table for gear looked like - red are unacceptable conflicts of parts. The previous image doesn't even have all the sets we have or will have. The ability for the player to put on any gear in any combo takes hundreds of hours of a guy pushing polygons pixel by pixel.

Painting done for the thumbnail of a gameplay presentation of Kromlech at Gamescom 2025 - it depicts Cronach (the protagonist) fighting a group of bandits in megalithic ruins overgrown with mysterious dark thorny vines.

Here's the painting I did for Kromlech's release date trailer, without logos and uncropped.

And here's the (rather quickly made) painting I did for the trailer's thumbnail:

YouTube video by Kromlech Kromlech - Announcement Trailer

Have you seen the live action (yes) trailer for Kromlech?
It was made some years ago, and the game's concept changed quite a bit since then.
It was one of the existing bits of media I was shown before I joined the studio and it was a big reason why I did.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUTN...

YouTube video by Kromlech Kromlech - Release Date Announcement Trailer

Kromlech will release in Early Access on the 5th of March!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKfO...

Another vibe concept, this time trying to finalize the direction for a minor faction of former bandits and outlaws turned holy-tree-protectors.

Here's a "vibe" concept I did for warriors of the Gwern faction. Its purpose was to narrow down how stylized we wanted to go with the armours and characters and there were some limitations I had to stick to. You can see the left guy pretty much spot on in the screenshots (not the fancy boots tho.)

YouTube video by Kromlech Kromlech Dev Talk #1 - Art Director Jan Pospíšil

I did a short (very sleep deprived -___-) interview about Kromlech and my work on it. Probably didn't explain a lot of stuff I wanted to, I don't remember and I'm not watching this again. XD
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcO5...

(model and textures by Filip Toman)

Another weapon concept for Kromlech, this time it's maces. These are more loosely based on historical stuff, less so on specific finds.

A concept for "Celt" axes in Kromlech. In reality they span a looong period of time going way before the Celts.

More weapons for Kromlech - this time for the bronze age Barrow Folk. (who tend to rise from their unquiet burial mounds lately) Again, lots of real world stuff in there.

A concept for a Kromlech location that's not accessible in the EA release build, and might look completely different in the final version. We did lots of exploration for this (this is V03), but this is the one I personally liked the best. I don't do a lot of enviro concepts, this was fun.,

(here's some images for those who have no idea what I'm talking about)

To the Gwerni, Tefnet is one of three divine brothers. The ancient Barrowfolk worshipped Knefnes, or Knéph Nassa - the Queen of Twilight, who rode a chariot dragged by two wyrms through her fields of pale Aspadala flowers.
Curious.

Bud. Bud.

Banquet for Fools out March 5th! ❤️ 3 days!

#indiegame #rpg

make the assets a bit differently and drives the overall look of the game to be a bit more "painterly", for a lack of a better term. Something I still think I see in Skyrim, for instance - a game I consider to be incredibly well art directed and visually consistent. You can recognize a Skyrim NPC.

I'm also really happy that I was able to stick to this "watercolor/gouache" style for many concepts. I talk about this in the interview I posted a few days ago - it just feels better to do them like this. But also - and this is just a feeling with no evidence - I think it pushes the 3D artists to

Been a freelance illustrator for 12 years, now part time.
Full time art director on a bronze/iron age inspired sword&sorcery UE5 game. More info coming soon.
store.steampowered.com/app/2406680/...
(I took my website down recently to save on money and also F squarespace, so deviantart has to do.)

And I forgot - there are some Celt statues of possibly heroes or deities in what we might call buddhist-like poses. I always thought that was neat accidental artistic convergence.