Community Spotlight is a regular feature that highlights and celebrates amazing fan projects in the Remedy community. For our first Community Spotlight of 2022, we're returning to the Federal Bureau of Control with a look back at Sarah's breathtaking portfolio.
Almost three years after the release of Control, love for the game is still as strong as ever! Without a doubt, one of the game's most passionate players in the fandom is Sarah, an artist and virtual photographer based in Brazil, whose kindness continues to help shape the online atmosphere and whose incredible projects help spark creativity. Joining the community in late-2020, she has filled the past year with creative challenges, gorgeous artwork, and kind words. Alongside her artwork, she also owns the Tumblr page, FBC Breakroom, a creative outlet for other Control-related work.
While her portfolio is extensive, her most impressive project so far might have been #OldestHouseOctober, an art challenge similar to Inktober which uses prompts from the world of Control. Some of these prompts include "Mold-1", "Essej", "Talking To Plants", and "Threshold Kids"; a mix of main-quest lines, side missions, and in-jokes. Posting one piece of art daily, Sarah kept her passion and intense level of detail running throughout, delivering awesome pieces such as this portrait of the former Director of the Bureau...
While a digital artist, Sarah uses patterns and techniques from traditional art such as mimicking brushstrokes as they would appear on the canvas. Contrasting colours such as the use of scarlet and teal runs throughout a lot of her Control work. While both tones are representative of the game's colour schemes (greys and blues representing safety, amber for warnings, and red representing The Hiss), recognising what those different colours mean in the game, brings new meaning and depth to the art. Many of the pieces include a mix of blue and red, giving the feeling that there's something more sinister, whether it's Threshold Kids' sinister motives or Hedron's struggle to fend off attacks. Some pieces are entirely absent of any red completely such as "Jesse Talking To The Plants" and "Polaris", and bathed in blue, providing a very different and safe vibe. I love how the works play with these colours, creating either a reassuring feel to the piece or an implied threat. It's brilliantly done and clearly painted by an absolute Control nerd.
Of course, her creativity wasn't only limited to the #OldestHouseOctober challenge, instead, her positivity and love for the series have been a constant. Over the past year, Sarah posted a breathtaking mock magazine cover covering bureau activity, as well as hairstyle memes, FadenFriday doodles, comics, screenshots, #JesseJanuary art, crossovers, personal development comparisons and more!
I love Sarah's work and was so grateful when she agreed to talk to us about how she joined the community and her progress when creating new pieces. Check out our conversation below!
Well hello there! I’m Sarah, I’m from Brazil, 28 yo, and I love Control to bits! It opened the door for stronger Remedy drugs (as in, made me play Alan Wake and Quantum Break, which I also love - and I will never get over Beth Wilder’s fate). I absolutely love video games with deep, well-thought stories, and Remedy games scratch my itch of playing theorists and finding clues and putting the bits together. Plus, everyone’s struggles are so relatable… but back to me, I guess: I currently work as a freelance artist, got a Tumblr for my Control art, shitpost and unending screenshots (@fbcbreakroom) and an Ao3 account for fanfic so yeaaah… I’m a nerd! =3
In your spare time, you create these incredible pieces of Control artwork. When and how did you get your passion for art?
I always had it, I think. I remember being four (or five?) and watching Mega Man on tv, filling a cheap notebook with drawings and more drawings of him, trying to get his likeness right. It wasn’t all that spectacular then, but I know I always wanted to be an artist - thinking of a more traditional, maybe white-collar future is like torture for me even now
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How did you develop your style and were there any artists that inspired you?
Oh, style is something super subjective. You say I have a style, but I don’t actually see it! It’s probably because it’s mine, we don’t really recognize our own things, right? It’s just something you develop after trying hard and failing and trying again. That said, wow, a lot of artists inspire me daily - the whole lot on the Control artbook, for example (lol), but also the drama of baroque paintings, Magic the Gathering artists, DnD artists… and a lot of artists from Twitter too!
Where do you start when designing new pieces and do you have a routine or tradition when creating something new?
I like to make a simple sketch to get the composition and what exactly I want to draw, then get all sorts of visual references I can, mostly pictures. It’s really fun to try and play puzzle with what part will go where, and sometimes it takes you in directions you weren’t expecting.
How and when you were introduced to Remedy's games?
It was the PSN Christmas sale in 2020, there were a couple of games I heard were cool and wanted to try out: Outer Worlds and Control. I asked for a friend’s opinion on which one to get and he passionately told me to get Control, because it was a masterpiece. Some 200hrs between PS4 and Steam later, I think I know what he was getting at. (lol)
Last year you created a new piece of artwork each day throughout October as part of #OldestHouseOctober, how did that event come about and how did you find the challenge?
There’s this thing in October where artists draw a list of pre-conceived themes, Inktober (you probably heard about it, I know). It’s become a big thing over the years and sparked some polemics and discussions, but that aside, I wanted to do my version of it because I never had drawn one finished piece per day and I wanted to know if I could. I was watching some videos on different approaches to color around that time too, so it all came together in my mind: what If I try it as a challenge and a way to practice? And of course, it had to be with Control. I’m just so hyper-fixated on this game that it became part of my personality at this point. (lol)
What is the artwork that you're most proud of from #OldestHouseOctober?
It’s definitely day 21 - esseJ! But there are a lot of runner ups: Day 16 - Underhill, Day 20 - Philip, Day 26 - Hedron, Day 27 - The Staff, Day 29 - Kid Fadens, Day 31 - The Hiss…
From start to finish, on average, how long does it take you to make a single piece? And what's the hardest aspect or most time-consuming part to get right when creating them?
The pieces I did for the OldestHouseOctober usually took a couple to four hours to finish, mixing painting and photo bashing with my screenshots of the game. When it’s something more in the photorealistic vein, it can take a couple of days to make a full-body character, but I’ve spent a couple of weeks in pieces with a lot of people and scenery on them.
What projects are you working on next or want to work on one day?
God, my personal projects are all over the place right now! (lol) but I do intend to revisit the Control Major Arcana tarot cards I was making (I need to change a couple of things there, but I still love the idea a whole lot), I’ll definitely do OldestHouseOctober 2022, and I love putting the characters in different outfits, so you may see some more of that in the future.
