Developer Spotlight: Aïda de Ridder

We spoke to Wispfire's Art Director Aïda de Ridder about her process and work Herald: The Interactive Period Drama – Complete Edition and beyond.

Initially containing only the first two parts of a four-part story, Herald: An Interactive Period Drama released on February 22, 2017. Just over eight years later, this vibrant point-and-click adventure finally gets the chance to close the book on its tale with the release of Herald: The Interactive Period Drama – Complete Edition on May 1, 2025.

Herald features some absolutely stunning artwork, particularly the painting-esque portraits of the diverse cast of characters. As the art itself immediately grabbed me, I reached out to Art Director Aïda de Ridder to learn a little more about her artistic journey, and Herald’s part in that.

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your role on Herald: An Interactive Period Drama?

I am a self taught visual artist who was primarily focused on illustration before taking up the role of Art Director at Wispfire.

What was your path as an artist like? Did you draw or paint from a young age, or take it up later in life? Did you go to school for your art?

I was basically always drawing or crafting things from a young age. Before I really got into drawing, I was writing stories that I would draw pictures for. Eventually I enjoyed the drawing more than the writing and continued doing that for a long time until I got into working on games. Drawing has always been a hobby for me, and art school was more a way for me to collaborate with others rather than hone my personal craft. Right now I really enjoy the entire production of making games to satisfy my creative itch.

Some of Aïda's illustrative work on Herald: An Interactive Period Drama.

When did you start working on video games, and what drew you to it?

My love for games really started very early, but really engrossed me once I realised the powerful potential of it as a multidisciplinary medium to create larger experiences. I’ve always enjoyed designing the entire experience of an entertainment product, to fully immerse the viewer or player into its world building. I also really enjoyed working together with others to create an experience.

Was the art style shown within Herald core to its initial concept, or was that something that came along later through development?

One of the reasons we started our own game studio was really to focus on our own strengths as artists. So I always relied on my own skillset and art style to bring our projects to life. I did do many sketches to see how stylized or more naturalistic I would draw the characters in, but the overall color scheme of Herald really came from my own personal feelings regarding the project and the world we were creating.

"My love for games really started very early, but really engrossed me once I realised the powerful potential of it as a multidisciplinary medium to create larger experiences."

How closely do you work with the other members of Wispfire in developing the concept or visual identity on a game like this?

My team members trust me with the art direction, and give me a lot of freedom with it. But we do always discuss everything and I work with their feedback to tweak things to better match the story. But every part of this production was very collaborative and all our ideas mingle together to create a final product.

What influences (within or beyond games) did you draw from?

My drawing style was influenced by both 90’s Disney classics and my later fascination with Anime and Manga. I also read a ton of European comic books growing up. I’d like to think all of this mixed together to create a style that uniquely appeals to my own tastes (and hopefully others!) I am very focused on 2D art and try to incorporate its appeal into our games. Since Herald has a 3D world, we ended up going with hand painted textures for everything, to match the 2D animated portraits.

What was working on the art for Herald like? How did you work in tandem with modelers for the assets beyond the portraits and textures?

I had a pretty clear vision for the 3D style of Herald, I worked closely with our 3D artists to direct the type of stylized models we wanted, and then we used our large hand painted texture library, to create an uniform look between the models. I am still quite happy with the end result!

What were some of your inspirations for the UI and other elements like the journal? What type of considerations did you have to make between usability and style, if any?

We all had a rather minimalistic and diegetic vision for the UI, and then the idea to create a 3D journal came rather naturally from that. We wanted the main focus to be on the world and story, so we made an effort to try and keep it fairly simple. The hardest part was combining the visual novel style dialogue panel with pleasing looking 3D camera angles. We always had to make sure the 3D characters were visually smaller than the 2D portraits laid on top. This was often pretty hard to pull off, especially in some of the very small rooms on a ship!

"We all had a rather minimalistic and diegetic vision for the UI, and then the idea to create a 3D journal came rather naturally from that. We wanted the main focus to be on the world and story, so we made an effort to try and keep it fairly simple."

It has been over 8 years since the original release of the first two books. How has your process changed, if at all, leading up to the release of the Complete Edition?

I find this hard to answer because my process is always evolving with each new project. It’s fun to be challenged so our newest game project, while having similar elements as Herald, is a wildly different type of production.

What sort of lessons or ideas were you able to take from Herald into your other work, like Acolyte and The Talon Moon?

The big discovery for me during the production of Herald, was learning how to rig and animate 2D portraits, and really enjoying that. This is something I hope to keep incorporating into many future projects!

I’m sure it’s tough to choose, but do you have one particular piece or element within the game you are most proud of? If so, Why?

I am proud of the visual cohesion we managed to pull off within the 3D game world, despite working with many different 3D artists over Herald’s production. I enjoy walking around the world we created and I hope others will feel immersed into it as well!

Herald: The Interactive Period Drama – Complete Edition Releases May 1, 2025 for PC on the Steam and GOG storefronts.