Cover art - Gridpix
I designed the cover art, and drew the logo, for Gridpix, an original Commodore 64 game by Carleton Handley, released in 2020 by RGCD and Psytronik. The artwork was used on four editions of the game, as well as on the disk, tape and cartridge labels, and as a free poster that came with the cartridge version.
The game is a 'picross' type puzzle game, which I didn't think was visually very interesting as a basis for the cover art. In doing a cover for a game for a retro machine I wanted to capture that feeling from the 1980s where games often had wild fantasy art on the cover that bore no relationship to the look of the actual game, but at the same time I wanted to capture some of the feel of the game (the grid based puzzles) in the artwork.
Cover art
The cartridge edition of the game, including manual and posters.
This was my original rough sketch of the cover idea.
Basic pencils for the bulk of the cover art. I considered building this in 3D, but in the end decided it would be quicker and easier to draw in Clip Studio Paint, making heavy use of perspective rulers.
Before inking, I also used a photographic FOV warp in Affinity Photo, to add a feeling of scale, and make some of the straight perspective lines look curved and more interesting.
The background was drawn completely separately from the main design. I dropped the lower half of the background at the colouring stage.
The finished coloured artwork was deliberately designed to work at multiple aspect ratios and crop sizes, and to have enough overdraw to cover the sides of box as well as the front.
The four editions of the game, on cartridge, disk and cassette in two different box sizes. Photo courtesy of the game's author, Carleton Handley.