These images were created as the first level in a meditative puzzle game where the player is given a mixture of inverted and rotated rings and has to flip and spin the rings to match the lines of the light and dark side to advance. I originally drew this freehand in my sketchbook with a Uni-ball Vision pen:
And then brought it into Photoshop to divide and invert each individual ring:
As you can see in the inverted image of all rings:
The artwork needed to be composed with both the light and dark values taken into account and each made visually compelling. I chose to use black and white in the composition because I thought it would reduce eyestrain. Here is a shot of the rings inverted and rotated as you might find in the game:
The initial sketch took me around 6 hours to complete and then the Photoshop editing and fine-tuning took another hour. In subsequent levels the images diverge from the organic curves of the first to a more industrialized and geometric composition, with each level image solved becoming the center hub of the next level, until you are brought full circle back into the organic world and re-create the circular forms from the geometric. Part homage to M.C. Escher, part reflective return to a unified self, like most things, this game is still a work in progress.
