How great is Instagram in board game marketing? It feels like a difficult channel to get a high level of engagement. I am visual stimulus kind of person so I love the medium, scrolling through a stream of board game pictures is very inspiring. GreenHookGames strictly follow dedicated board game profiles to leave my feed untainted, but occasionally I also follow artist that I like, especially board game artists. This is how I came across the english board game artist Roland MacDonald. You might already know his work – because it is top of class and outstanding. He now live permanently in Utrecht Netherlands.
Remake of a Classic
Can you tell us a little about your artistic background and how you got into making art for board games?
I have always enjoyed drawing and making things but my path to becoming an illustrator had more than a few detours. I studied fine art but it was conceptual/contemporary art and painting was heavily discouraged. I learned more about philosophy than art so that was a misstep after that I became a Chef which was an adventure but another diversion after doing an MA Game Design I got an art position at Sega/Creative Assembly doing 3D modelling for PS2 and PC games. I found modelling to be unsatisfying creatively as you are mostly making someone else’s concepts. So I started working hard to retrain myself to be a concept artist/illustrator.
1 of 200 custom event illustrations for Shogun Total War 2
I used every spare hour I had for two years and eventually got asked to do the concept art and illustrations for Shogun 2 Total War. That was an excellent opportunity.
7 visual styles I would love to see used for board games
The visual style of a game can make just as much of a difference as the choice of theme that a creator choose. Within animation and video games, there have been a wide exploration of different visual styles.
Bound from Plastic Studio
Board games has a tradition for classic illustrational work topped with some graphic design. Probably because games must be decodable for the viewer -high contrast between flavor and information is great.
When Santorini was funded I asked Gavan Brown if he felt the success was due to the minis in the game. He did not think that but instead pointed towards the simple ruleset as the biggest draw. I think he might be right about that but following Kickstarter’s it seems like gamers just love miniatures.
Making a game with miniatures is not easy. There are soo many steps from your sketch to production. Sean Sutter, a concept & comic artist from California took the leap into making his dream project – a fantasy skirmish game full of miniatures called Relicblade.
Sean is a fantastic sculptor and also shares his experience with making minis on his youtube channel Metal King Studios. I am thrilled to present you an interview with Sean.
Tell us a little about your artistic background and how you got into making your own board game?
My artistic background is in the traditional two-dimensional art. I studied drawing vigorously throughout school and graduated with a BFA with an emphasis in painting. I have worked as a graphic designer, fine art painter, and comic book illustrator.
It is much more important to make good sketches than good inking. You could either sketch directly in color or start in greys. Fix proportions, composition, anatomy as much as you can in this phase before moving on.
Start broad and stay broad
Starting out very rough can improve the final product a lot. Make a small canvas in the proportions that you plan to do the final artwork in. When I say small, I mean like 10% the size of your final image. Take a simple brush that can put down a thick line. Often it fuels imagination if you set the brush to use pressure-sensitive opacity, but not necessarily variable size at this point.
In this step, you should do several quick sketches of all the different ways you can think of composing the image. Work quickly with shapes and composition – draw loose lines, use the lasso tool to quickly create shapes, or fill your lines. You may insinuate detail, but only very roughly. Try to make a lot of scribbly lines quickly when you draw. Often the eye will later see shapes within these lines.
Do not hesitate to quickly select an element and cut, flip, scale, position, or rotate it to get a better composition.
Think series
Since we are talking about images for board games, you will probably be doing more than one image. Maybe you need 22 hero items or monster cards, and for sure you need to know everything about games and you can get all that in oneclicksports.co.uk.
Try designing several at a time, thinking about how they are all part of the same visual language. This may include size, distance to the viewer, details, and colors.
Samurai Swords
In the example above from Samurai Swords, there are two characters, two role cards and two weapon cards. Apart from the motif do you spot any similarities on icon positioning, background patterns, element behaviours? This might seem obvious but it is a great benefit to think game readability in designing series.
Series have rules – too much deviation from these rules will break the benefit of the series.
Remember that elements of the game can be tied together using the same type of composition or colors. Series have rules – too much deviation from these rules will break the benefit of the series. If all item cards have a red color palette, you cannot suddenly make one card another color unless there is a specific game-related reason.
Tschak by Dutrait
Play with series of images. My favourite example is Dutrait’s character cards here. You can also give the players stuff to discover, like the vials in Apotheca by Del Cid. This is the power of game art – often there are multiple of the same type.
Have you ever done a nice drawing and hung it on the wall? If you have ever tried making 5 similar drawings, but with some variations, then you probably know how awesome a series of images look together (even if it is stickmen).
My daughters drawings for the game ‘Dear Santa’
If you are working on a series of images it might be a good idea to start up several illustrations at the same time so you can jump between them with “fresh eyes.”
2. LINES
If you normally tend to do very precise inking of your sketched drawings before coloring I would advise you to try and skip the inking. Maybe just ‘clean’ your sketch.
If you are going to ink your piece, I would select one or two brushes beforehand to use. I would make one brush, that is a little rough on the edges to add life to the painting. Try to have a lightsource in mind when inking so you can make the edges towards the light thinner. If your tablet causes jittery brush lines, I recommend HejStylus, a small mac software that can steady your “mouse” across all your applications. Some programs like Clip Studio Pro or Zbrush has this feature implemented. I found that it is a strong tool to have in the bag to turn on/off with a simple shortcut for making awesome linework.
Getting another artist brush can sometimes inspire you to paint in a new way. Here is a small selection of my brushes for Photoshop that you can download and try out. There is a sketch brush thick, a sketch rough, a lineart brush and a paint brush.
Here is a small selection of my brushes for Photoshop that you can import and try out.
Click image to download
A good B/W is “easier” to color, but more graphic than a non-outlined color painting.
Sketch from a game in development “Skrald!”
One of my greatest inspirations was the Danish artist that me and my family travelled with when I was younger. On every trip we made abroad, he constantly drew images with his Rotring inking set. He taught me the importance of building up contrast between all elements to pull the audience closer and make the elements stand out.
Stay tuned(best option for this – is the one signal button in the lower right corner) for the next part of this series where I will touch on painting.
In a little booth in the far end of the annual board game convention Essen Spiel – something caught my attention. Crossroads of Heroes pulled me in, not only because of the kung-fu theme but also by the beautiful banners filled with loving characters in a harmonious color scheme topped with fascinating Chinese Hanzi calligraphy.
In a little booth in the far end of the annual board game convention Essen Spiel – something caught my attention. Crossroads of Heroes pulled me in, not only because of the kung-fu theme but also by the beautiful banners filled with loving characters in a harmonious color scheme topped with fascinating Chinese Hanzi calligraphy. I enjoyed a few rounds of play of a game that seemed really hard and fun. The game is the sole project of one man and his wife both currently residing in Hong Kong. His name is Patrick Lee and work under the artist name Pat Piper.
All games that passes Ian O’Toole’s hands has a superior level of art. Ian is both a talented board game illustrator and graphic designer which shines through in his work. The ability to create a variety of styles, equally beautiful, like Lisboa and Khan of Khans – takes a special talent. He already made the art for several great titles and I am sure that with his skills we will see a lot more. That is why, I am thrilled to present an interview with one of my favourites in the industry – Ian O’Toole from Perth, Australia.
Tell us a little about your artistic background and how you got into making art for board games?
I’ve worked as a graphic designer, illustrator and Art Director in all sorts of industries and environments for about 15 years. Advertising, marketing, animation etc. In 2013 I started to work for myself as a freelancer and decided to dip my toe into creating illustration and design for boardgames. More as a hobby project at the start, but it quickly gained momentum and now the majority of my work is board game related. Continue reading “Meet the talented board game illustrator and graphic designer Ian O’Toole”→
Learning to make great digital art is hard work. I would like to share a few ideas and tips that have helped me and could improve your digital painting for board games.
Personally, I have always played and experimented with a variety of styles. In some ways, this has hindered me from progressing in one direction. I often end up using time on something irrelevant to the actual painting. I have found that if I want to improve, I need more focus.
When painting with traditional ink on paper, you concentrate on every stroke you make. Many times when we illustrate digitally , there are too many options and noise between your vision and the final product – like suddenly wanting to setup new shortcut keys, check tutorials, or search for reference images.
So get rid of any noise that interrupts your workflow. Work in broad strokes, do not get caught up in details, and create a clean working environment that will free the creative process.
Some people just repeatedly make innovative, interesting and beautiful stuff. Todd Sanders from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is one of them. As Scott Allen from Narrow Gate Games recently said in a BGG thread – Well, you can’t be good at everything Todd. You’ll just have to settle for concertina bookmaking, and game design, and graphic design, and woodworking. Todd is a big name in the indie Print And Play board game community. For most of the games he makes, he creates art on his own – leaning to his graphic design experience. – and I am thrilled to present an interview with him to you here.
Well, you can’t be good at everything Todd. You’ll just have to settle for concertina bookmaking, and game design, and graphic design, and woodworking
You are are a craftsman, thinker and seem to have an eye for minimalism and aesthetics in all you do. Tell us a little about your artistic background and how you got into making art for board games?
Being described as a thinker is a new one. Thanks for that. I studied in college to be an architect and worked as an architectural designer for a couple of years. For the last 20 or so I have been a graphic designer and book maker. I got into board game design about 6 years ago, first redesigning the artwork for some games I had in my collection as well as older games that I took on the challenge of doing a makeover for and then progressed to my own game designs. I suppose the minimalism comes from my former training as an architect.
We will kick the new year off with an interview with a self-publisher, game designer, and graphic designer. You probably know him for his iconic profile images only showing the top of his head and his curly dark hair. Since the dawn of GreenHookGames, I’ve wanted to interview him. Daniel Solis the multitalented and super productive mentor of the industry. I title him mentor because he has alongside his own designs managed to share many tutorials, tricks, and articles on the topic of the graphic layout of games. Enjoy!
Anyone who visited the Lautapelit booth at Essen this year would have seen multiple titles that Finnish Ossi Hiekkala has worked on – “Honshu” the new map building game set in feudal Japan by Kalle Malmioja, and the ingenious fast paced bicycling race “La Flamme Rouge” from the designer Asger Harding Granerud . On both of these games, Ossi worked together with graphic designer Jere Kasanen. On a normal day, I would probably be reluctant to sit down for a bicycling game – but the art of La Flamme Rouge combined with seeing how it plays blows my mind and make me turn on a dime.
Looking into the world of the archipictor Ossi Hiekkala as he calls himself, you will find an extraordinary artistic visual universe. That is why I am happy to share this interview with him together with comments from the La Flamme Rouge designer Asger and co-artist Jere.
