29 September 2026
The studio has a map
The site is built as an engraved sea chart: the sections are marks on it.
Both games are about a cold northern sea, so the site is a sea chart. The sections sit on it as marks: Lantern in the north, Broadside in the south, news in Trywork on the mainland, and the cartouche at the foot signs who drew it all.
The chart itself is drawn in code — coastline, water hatching, the frame of the sheet. The vignettes were drawn separately and then brought to a single stroke.
The first attempt was drawn like a logo: solid fills, a firm outline, handsome at full size. On the chart it turned into a dark blot, because it carried twice the ink of the water around it.
After that everything was counted. The water hatching runs at about twelve percent ink, and a vignette has to land near that. Stroke width in the source is the source width divided by twice the vignette’s width on screen: the wider the vignette on the chart, the thinner its line, because it shrinks less. Dull arithmetic — and the reason fourteen vignettes drawn on different days look like one hand.