The Art of Beyond the Veil: Paul Thut and Our Evolving Style

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Beyond the Veil spirit in a flowing Victorian dress, shown side by side as a pencil sketch, black linework and finished blue and lilac artwork.

While we spend a lot of time thinking about what might be hiding in the shadows, Wrenegade Paul has the pleasure of giving it a face. Deciding what that face should look like has been an investigation all of its own.

Beyond the Veil is our supernatural investigation tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG), and its artwork is that first immersive step into the mysteries waiting inside. As the game has developed, we’ve been asking what those images tell you before you’ve even read a single rule. Do they invite you to investigate, or leave you expecting horror and nothing else?

That last question helped us recognise that it was time for a change. We wanted a friendlier, more approachable visual style that could appeal to more people across a wider range of ages, while keeping the mystery, atmosphere and occasional sharp teeth for those who wanted a more gritty experience.

To explain where that direction comes from, it helps to meet the artist behind it.

Meet Paul Thut, the Artist Behind Beyond the Veil

One of the Brothers Thut, Paul is an award-winning artist, illustrator and designer who has spent the past six years helping bring the Beyond the Veil universe to life.

A graduate of Riley Art College, his background spans illustration, painting, cartooning, modelling, comic book inking and graphic design. His work has ranged from portraits to fantasy illustrations and traditional cartoons, with artwork displayed in galleries along the way.

Within Wrenegade Studios, his work extends well beyond the illustrations. Artwork, animation, lore, entities and book design all form part of his contribution to Beyond the Veil. He also builds the website and manages our social media, which means you’ve probably encountered his work even when you weren’t looking at a picture.

Paul Thut working on comic artwork at a drawing board. — *Paul at the drawing board, working on comic artwork.*

Before the Veil: portraits, cartoons and comic books

Long before Beyond the Veil, Paul was drawing everything from portraits of family and friends to colourful cartoon characters and comic book artwork. His work over the years has moved between the realistic, the fantastical and the slightly ridiculous, with plenty of room for all three.

That mix feels right at home in Beyond the Veil, where ordinary people find themselves caught up in extraordinary situations. There’s room for a frightening encounter, a strange discovery and a moment of humour, sometimes all around the same table.

As we’ve explored the game’s visual direction, Paul’s love of cartoons and comics has become a bigger part of its identity. It’s familiar territory for him, and a natural fit for the world we’re creating.

A selection of Paul’s artwork over the years, spanning portraits, cartoons and comic book illustration.

Finding his way back to drawing

Paul’s relationship with art hasn’t been without interruption. Rheumatoid arthritis in his drawing hand led to a decade-long hiatus, followed by surgeries to realign his tendons.

His return included years of private practice, creating artwork for himself, family and friends. Eventually, that return to the craft he loves became part of the creative foundation of Wrenegade Studios.

Today, he combines traditional artistic skills with digital tools, using an old Huion GT-191 drawing monitor and Adobe Photoshop.

How the Artwork Evolved: Paintings, Silhouettes and a New Direction

TThe original vision for Beyond the Veil was grittier, with Paul exploring a more realistic, painted style to bring its world to life. Although he has a background in painting, creating that same style digitally felt less natural to him. It also took far longer than was practical for a game with so many characters, entities and locations to illustrate.

For the Prologue, Paul took a different approach, using silhouettes to make the artwork more manageable while leaving some of the details to the viewer’s imagination. This helped with the time involved, but it also suited the mystery of the game. You could see enough to know something was there, without being entirely sure what you were looking at.

As Paul often points out, the scariest part of a horror film can be what you don’t see. Your imagination fills in the gaps. Think of Jaws: long stretches without a clear view of the shark helped make the thought of what was beneath the water terrifying. Sometimes, a glimpse is all you need.

That approach gave the Prologue its own atmosphere, but as Beyond the Veil developed, we wanted to show more of the world and the personalities within it. We also wanted the artwork to reflect the wider range of stories the game could tell.

The move towards a friendlier comic book style grew from both of those needs. It gives Paul a way of working that feels more natural, while allowing us to show the strange, playful and adventurous side of Beyond the Veil.

A silhouette image of a smoky entity reaching out.

Earlier Beyond the Veil artwork, shadowy silhouette used in the Prologue. Different approaches to revealing just enough, while leaving your imagination to fill in the gaps.

Why we’re changing the art style

Fear is part of Beyond the Veil, but it doesn’t describe everything we want the game to offer.

We wanted the artwork to reflect that variety more clearly. A strongly horror-focused visual identity can give people a narrow impression of the stories they can tell. If every image promises a nightmare, it’s easy to miss the possibilities for humour, wonder and lighter supernatural adventures.

Our new direction aims to make more people, across more age ranges, look at Beyond the Veil and think, “I’d like to explore that.” The tone of the investigation can then reflect the group playing it.

Somewhere between Scooby-Doo and the comic book page

When we talk about the art direction we’re aiming for, we often place it somewhere between the approachable supernatural mystery of Scooby-Doo and a more grounded comic book style.

Friendlier artwork still leaves plenty of room for menace. A werewolf can have a strong, readable design and remain something you would rather avoid. A spirit can be beautiful, sorrowful or unsettling without needing to be gruesome.

Two takes on a familiar nightmare: the low, animal-like stance of the werewolf and the more human features of the wolfman.

Sketches and Creature Designs for Beyond the Veil

Paul prefers to sketch out and create his concept work in his sketchpads first before moving over to digital to refine his artwork and colour it.

These feral werewolf and lucid werewolf sketches take a well-known entity and explore different possibilities for different types of lycanthropy within Beyond the Veil. Alongside them, the spirit artwork offers a quieter kind of encounter, though we wouldn’t recommend assuming that means she’s harmless.

Together, the sketches, linework and colour artwork offer a closer look at the inhabitants of Beyond the Veil and the visual direction we’re exploring.

Creature studies exploring anatomy, movement, expressions and the balance between human and animal features.

Sketchbook, linework and colour views of a spirit, showing the flowing shapes and spectral palette of the design

Building the World Through Artwork

That visual identity also extends into the places our mysteries inhabit and the way we introduce the game.

The hidden SPS vault offers a glimpse of the world Paul creates by combining stock imagery with digital artwork. The accompanying video takes you behind the scenes of our website’s hero image, revealing how its layers come together to build the finished scene. From the staircase and surrounding mist to the Investigator and spirit, you can see how each element contributes to the whole.

As Beyond the Veil continues to develop, we want its artwork to capture the possibilities of the game itself: a world that can be eerie, playful, beautiful and dangerous, sometimes within the same story.