Today we are talking about how to choose the art style for your board game. This is quite a big step in the creation of a board game and can be quite tricky to navigate. It’s all part of the design process and we’re here to flesh it out a little bit.
Transcript
hello
and welcome to the decking awesome
podcast my name is owen and i’m joined
by the awesome
kara and brian hello hello today we are
talking about how to choose the art
style
for your board game this is quite a big
step in the creation of a board game
and can be quite tricky to navigate it’s
all part of the design process and we’re
here to flesh it out a little bit
so i feel like the first step in
choosing your airstyle is getting the
grips with the finished mechanisms and
team
for your game and once the game gets to
a point where the major mechanics and
overall team for the game
is kind of done then you should be start
to think about the art style
brian do you agree that the mechanics
and teams should be tackled first before
an air cell
oh yeah absolutely like i mean unless
you are
fortunate enough to be an artist or to
have one working for you for free
art is a very expensive part of uh board
game design
like you can sit there behind your
laptop and you can design up a game and
do 30 different prototypes
but if you have to pay someone to put
nice artwork on your game it’s going to
cost you a lot
and i know i said it before on this
podcast pay your artists people
they work hard they do good work give
them money for it
but if any artists are looking for
exposure
and we will also pay but no it
if you if you jump in too quickly with
artwork
you know it’s lovely having a a
beautiful looking prototype
but if you end up making big changes to
it or the whole mechanics change or the
layout of the board changes
you’re gonna have to go back and pay for
that artwork all over again the artist
doesn’t care that
you don’t want it anymore you’re gonna
have to pay for it again so it’s better
to
make sure you’re on or near the final
prototype
of uh of your game before you before you
start getting involved with this
and it can be kind of disorienting for
an artist to know that some of the
artwork isn’t going to be
yeah published as well i’m sure if they
spent lots and lots of time on a piece
of artwork and they said
oh actually we don’t need that card
anymore that can be really
difficult i do think that it’s important
to have an idea though before
like when you’re talking about art
styles maybe getting an artist
makes sense to to invest that time in
later in the game
but you do want to keep in mind the art
style during the development process
like it should become apparent to you
what market you’re
aiming for when you’ve found the fun
thing you want to
you want to get and let people play then
you
want to bring it together with a team
and that means that you should have some
idea of the art style that is going to
join the team and the the images
together like
i i do think when you’re play testing
you can you can play test with anything
like
if you want to take free images off the
internet if you want to just use clip
art from word or you want to hand draw
something yourself and paint
grace people you’re play testing with
will understand it’s a prototype it’s an
early stage game
it doesn’t have to have beautiful fancy
artwork on it
again if you’re an artist then you can
whip that stuff up in an hour or two
brilliant fair play to you go for it but
it’s not
essential like half of my games i know i
can attest to anyway are made
in like microsoft excel so that’ll tell
you the
quality level of artwork that i put into
the early prototypes
now as it goes on it’s nicer to have
nicer looks to it and maybe you’re
copying some images that are you know
free to use off the internet just for
the purpose of prototyping
so people can have an idea of what it
might look like towards the end
but early versions of the game do not
need to look fancy pretty
excellent they can just have kind of
nice
simple words they don’t uh they don’t
even need
fancy art at all yeah i think when
you’re talking about uh free artwork and
using clipart and
things for your prototypes uh you should
still be thinking about the earth cell
so
even when you were talking about you
know robots the
the free clip art you were choosing was
also kind of the team
and the art style you were kind of going
for so you’re saying it’s in excel
but that’s uh you’re still kind of
looking for that it’s a scientific thing
it’s almost like it’s a spaceship sci-fi
kind of
feel to it so it’s got kind of modern
aesthetic so you’re still
going towards an art style it’s just not
what the final prototype is going to be
like or or even if the art
work mixes well like color schemes and
stuff like that
yeah you’re kind of you’re still picking
the free artwork you want that
represents the game hopefully a little
bit better so especially with dice
summoners
we wanted to go for kind of mythological
teams
so we also wanted it was going to be
like monsters and stuff so he wanted to
have it look like a
kind of a you know how in encyclopedias
and stuff like that you’d see like a
badger
and be drawn by a man you know in the
wild or something like that when he’s
discovering badgers for the first time
discovering badgers and lsd
so yeah even in even in the time of
picking free clipboard it’s not just
about
googling what object is you know if you
have like a spade or something like that
in your free roam game free exploration
game you’re still trying to figure out
what kind of aesthetic you want that art
to be
yeah i’ve often felt spreadsheets are
very underrepresented in space games
yeah yeah and i think that if you’re
keeping in mind the art style that
you’re
going to go for from the start it can be
used to enhance the team like
the art style for dyson was kind of had
a gothic feel to us
so you knew the era you’re kind of going
for you’re kind of going for
like old school you’re going for we went
for a comic book style
design on the images themselves so we
knew that
what our vision of the game was is what
we were trying to convey so even though
we didn’t get
our illustrator in until much later in
the process we
knew what we were aiming for because we
thought it would enhance the team from
our perspective
like having a space modern
design of some of the more modern games
we felt would take away from the game
actually
because you’re putting that on because
it sells better or
because it’s what everyone else is doing
right now but you’re not it doesn’t like
feel like the game it doesn’t feel like
it fits or it’s the skin
of the of the game fits on top of it so
you want to make sure that like
it it encourages the like passion and
feel that you were aiming for when
you’re designing the game in the
prototype phases
yeah yeah because when it comes to a lot
of sci-fi you know space exploration
games they can very look
very crisp very modern and they can
almost come up with like
almost a professional feel to them the
art style and if your game is
less world building and it’s more social
interaction
you might want to focus less on the
spaceships and more on the people
and so you want that kind of art cell to
represent the mechanics of the game
as well as the team of the game so that
when a person looks at the front of the
box or looks at some of the cards or
components
they can kind of feel that this is a you
know a socially friendly game
or if it’s going to be a deep dive into
into number crunching
you want to kind of get that across i
mean how many times have you been
at a convention or walking down the isle
of a board game shop and the picture on
the front of the box has caught your eye
like you’ve never heard of the game
before but you’re going oh i really like
that artwork style
that looks like other games i’ve played
that i liked maybe i’ll pick it up and
see what it’s like
you know you’re you’re buying very much
off the
the artwork and i know you’re not
supposed to judge a book by its cover
but judging a board game by its cover
very appropriate
yeah like if blood rage is called
valhalla
you know mountain i don’t think i would
get it because blood rage is exactly
what i’m looking for in a board game
that’s certainly how i feel when i lose
by one point
yeah definitely so that kind of feel and
then obviously blood rage had
that art style across the whole game it
was very kind of
splashes of color almost anger so it’s
very competitive as well yeah yeah yeah
to know that the end of the world is
coming and we should all
just pretty much prepare and then kill
off people and then revive them
yeah but i will say you know conversely
as well
even if you have an idea in your head at
the start of what the game should look
like it’s a great idea to kind of
stick with it but don’t be don’t be
stuck with us you know
feel free to adapt what you’re imagining
as you go on like sometimes the theme
will change or the mechanics
will will adapt like even bumper bots is
now about
you know building colonies on titan but
the first version of it was trying to
build
killer robots to attack other scientists
so
that was kind of based in a factory
originally it was the artwork style i
had in my head
but now i’m trying to figure out what
titan looks like you know what does
space look like from titan
black still black fun fact
yeah yeah and and not just the art style
of like cards and the front of the box
but you also have to worry about
like you know the board layout if you
want it just to be a square or do you
want it to be a cool
shape some people have like trees you
know everdale has the trees and you also
have minis
like in blood rage obviously they wanted
the minis to look aggressive and
you know attacky whereas they wouldn’t
look so good if they were all just
sitting on a
bench and so yeah those kind of um
aspects should be taught about so art
style kind of approaches to everything
you know
and i think iconography then kind of
comes in a little bit
in that you should make sure that the
iconography
and the art style don’t clash but
your iconography is all about making
something clear so it’s not the same as
the design of the
board game itself so your illustrations
they really bring your game to life
the iconography just means people can
actually play it
so our iconography was very like
two-dimensional
flat and clear so you looked at an icon
and you could
see what that icon meant in on any
different media on the box on the manual
and the cards
but just because that flash iconography
is what we use for for
the for the icons it doesn’t mean that
our game had to have
that that same design you could
expand it out the illustrations to bring
in the team yep i totally agree with
that and then you know when you’re when
you’re coming into trying to figure out
what
uh you’re gonna actually pick as your
art style there’s gonna be a lot of
research
and so you know there’s lots of
different media out there from comic
book to computer games
to find out what you like uh understand
why certain art cells are so popular
among certain
types of board games such as like you
know sci-fi
lots of kind of blues and modern
chevrons and i’m sure there’s other
parts of it as well
how do you research into different art
styles so i take a few different
approaches to it
i definitely look at other games in the
genre
that the game is being made in i think
that
that can really help you get a baseline
for what’s expected
the games you can look at maybe 10 games
in a genre and then go
well these are the ones that i’m most
drawn to so they’re probably the
elements that i want to take away and
just based on box covers more than
anything else before you even go into
the
deep does it match anything that i’m
trying to do
and then even then you kind of want to
make sure that the audience
is considered so like even if let’s say
escape room games for save snowball
there can be quite dark because they’re
about escaping some sort of
questionable situation and uh
a lot of like even exit and things like
that have quite dark
boxes they have you know a darkened tomb
or a
it’s all very dark dark and polar
station dark
dark maze it’s all very dark and while i
like that and i
like the crisp elements of it i think
that
what i went for was something brighter
because the research
for the part of the market that i wanted
was different to quite the
part that exit wanted or the people they
wanted to attract with their thing so
i guess it’s looking around a lot of
things and then looking at
just generally escape rooms and people
who do escape from reviews and websites
on the internet and just kind of
immersing yourself in all sorts of that
art style
i think and anything to do with the
genre
yeah so market community current
programs out there yeah a lot of
great points to touch on uh brian do you
have any yeah i feel like ones that are
that are a bit overlooked as well are
the likes of comic book conventions
and um you know board game conventions
and stuff like that as well
go have a wander around there’s nearly
always an artist alley or
just an entirely dedicated floor of
artists which are brilliant
there’s people there selling their own
artwork people doing their own styles
everything from you know cute little
fairies to
demonic monsters and stuff like that
everyone will have their own kind of
art style that they like to do and
sometimes it’s good to just walk around
and go oh you know actually that’s
that’s exactly what i had in my head
that would work really well in my game
go up and have a chat with them because
a lot of artists will be quite willing
to
to work on a board game if you approach
them enough for the money
this this need to ease that everyone has
but if you go up and you say look you
know i’m working on a board game i
really like your style would you mind if
i got in touch with you maybe
talked out some ideas and stuff like
that you know maybe they go look sorry
my commissions are full
oh well but you know maybe it works out
really well
you know as kira was saying do have a
look online or look in board game shops
at games that are kind of similar in
genre to your own and see
you know is there a kind of recurring
style is there a recurring theme
across certain ones and you know maybe
you don’t want to stray too far from it
you want to attract in the same kind of
people who will play those games
but you can still put your own unique
element your own unique spin on it
yeah i think there’s awesome sites
online like others
in reddit there’s a place called hungry
artists which is great and it just shows
a lot of people who are
absolutely incredible at earth and just
willing to do
a couple of commissions you know usually
for people doing portraits and stuff
like that
but yeah i’ve never taught there’s no
really
such thing as board game artists
obviously there is artists that do board
games before and have that kind of
reputation but um i need them i need
them will do
they’re all great and they have worked
with lots of different companies on lots
of different projects before
and if you know what you’re doing you
can definitely help them out and there
shouldn’t be any problems at all
obviously there’s a couple different
ways of dealing with artists but we have
another podcast on workingwear just
which you should definitely check it out
i i’m a fan
of researching into the cultural
media of the day pretty much so not just
board games but like tv shows
and comic books and anything like that
where people
are even even adverts on online
places what kind of styles are people
people using
because when keira said community of
people so like if you’re dealing with
like space age stuff
is there a cool space program that
they’re playing you know if
you know assassin’s creed valhalla if
norse is getting really popular right
now
what kind of style aesthetic was
assassin’s creed using that made them
like fits into the team really well
those kind of aspects no you shouldn’t
be copying anybody obviously you should
still come up with your own
aspect but why does assassin’s creed
valhalla have that art style for that
gameplay and those mechanics and that
team
and and why does it work so well um or
does it work
really well or what would you change and
i think that once you have
got that idea like when you’re doing
your research into different art styles
find out the name of the art style
because if you want to check
instagram tags for that name or fan art
websites or like deviantart or
hiring illustrator you’re gonna you’re
gonna wanna look
to find for the actual person that
you’re looking for
you’re gonna wanna have the tags you
need to search for so
while you’re looking at like tv shows
and different things
maybe find out who the illustrator or
who whoever
designed that um look and feel and
get their name and what they specialize
in and then you can kind of use the
process of elimination to figure out
actually what’s this specific art style
that i’m looking for
that i that i now need to go google
local artists that do that specific art
style
and i know that some art styles are
easier to do than others like you know
when you use
digital paintings some people are still
traditional artists
and they might so if someone’s working
on an oil canvas painting for your
front of the game box know that changes
gonna cost a lot more than that good
alert but yeah that should just be kept
in the back of mind
i still think you should pick whatever
you think works best or whatever artist
you think works
because a better working together aspect
will help you
come up with the best art so for me it
feels like the balance between being
boldly unique
and fun and finding a tried and true art
style is kind of really important
so brian how do you feel about this
balance ugh don’t don’t even get me
started this is absolutely one of the
hardest bits of choosing an art style
because you want your game to stand out
you want it to pop you want it to look
really well
but you also don’t want to deviate too
far from
you know what the other type of games in
your genre are
because ideally as i said you want
players who play games in that genre you
want them to kind of walk along and go
oh that’s the style i like
i’ll pick it up and see what it’s like
but you want it to be unique so you
don’t want it to be derivative of the
other games that are out there
how do you find that how do you do it
nightmare absolute nightmare
i honestly god don’t know how artists do
it fair play to all of
if we have any creative people listening
to us thank you i honestly
do not know how you do it but yeah like
reach out and talk to
you know other game designers and stuff
like that if you know any locally
there’s usually a local group
somewhere nearby or check out facebook
have a chat with people
you know find out you know you’ve got
your you’ve got your idea you’ve got
your theme online
talk to people and see you know does
this work does it not work it’s really a
hard
it’s a tightrope act to walk to to have
a game
look unique and different but also the
exact same as all the other games
and it can apply in different ways as
well like like i said with the minis
and the design as well as like the
artwork on the card
so many different aspects you know you
can you can be unique and bold in one of
them
or multiple of them and then stay the
same in others so the balance isn’t just
in one specific part of your game
whether it’s the front of the box
or like you maybe you want the front of
the box to be as traditional as possible
just shows the name some of your
components nothing flashy
nothing crazy and then you can have some
crazy stuff inside
yeah what do you think here i think the
reason why we’re saying don’t go
too over the top on this is you just
don’t want to alienate people
your customers need to be able to engage
with your product
and i think that the that the thing
we’re trying to we’re trying to stop
is them feeling overwhelmed by really
inconsistent themes
or images based on the genre that
they’re looking for
so they want to be able to instead
relate to them so they want to have some
sort of grounding
so that’s why it’s important to try and
find this balance which is a really hard
balance to find
i think that you just have to be careful
to not push away a genre for
something like garden of bees our
artwork was really eye-catching and
uh but it actually appealed to a
it appealed to much younger groups than
we had expected
and i think it’s because of the really
really bright colors and stuff that are
associated with kids games
i think even though we ourselves thought
we enjoy it on a night of board gameplay
there’s something about the artwork that
just drove
kids to be super attracted to the to the
bright colors and the little tokens
and which is really cool but you want to
make sure that that’s what you plan on
doing so you could think oh yeah there’s
all the space games they’re just so dark
they’re all like oh they’re they’re kind
of all dull colors and stuff
i want a really bright and bubbly one
and that’d be great if you’re doing like
a comedic
space game or like munchkin where you
have like the brightest blue
for the space even though space itself
is black
there’s that balance but munchkin is for
a different audience to
terraforming mars which is quite a dark
one so there’s
there’s a good part of being unique but
there’s also like oh
they expect it to be comedic because you
have these bright bubbly
colors and you want to kind of be
careful that you’re not really confusing
your audience
yeah like no one picks up a game of
munchkin going this is definitely a
heavy strategy game
i’ll be at the table for eight or ten
hours just you know getting halfway
through this
you pick it up and you it looks like
what it is it’s a fun
nice quirky little game you know there’s
lots of little laughs in it and you’re
gonna have fun you’re gonna enjoy it
like you’re not gonna gather your
friends who enjoy
war strategy games around the table and
go i’ve got a new one for you lads
you’re going to take it to a group that
wants like a quick fun little
pickup game yeah it takes expectations
from people
on what the game is and the mechanics
are very important
some of my favorite games with the
mechanics i would definitely pick dice
summoners
i think it matches the expectations and
then also mixes in what the other kind
of
you know trading card game even though
dyson is a trading card game that’s kind
of the
place it sits into it fits into that
genre perfectly
the customers expect what they want but
it also has that unique style
that we don’t see at all and i need this
one and then one that we really wanted
this so
really happy with that some of the other
ones mentioned blood rage already
it’s gritty it’s realistic and the
miniatures
just ensure players are focused on the
combat aspects of the game
it kind of it works very well together
does anybody else have any good examples
that they want to
talk about i think so arboretum i do
think is a really i have the
collector’s edition of artery which is
sparklier than the normal
but that is a really a really
interesting one because so they’ve gone
for trees
for anyone who doesn’t know what an
arboretum it’s like a tree
place where trees live i actually don’t
know i don’t know
but it’s not a forest it’s not a virus
it’s a place where they grow trees
but they have gone for quite a realistic
art style
but it’s quite a light-hearted game it’s
not a long game
and they kind of did that by bringing in
like
kind of floral backgrounds and things
even though they have actual pictures of
quite realistic looking trees so you’d
think that that would take away from the
game
because if you have a realistic looking
tree games with more realistic looking
illustrations
tend to be heavier games so they
counteract that with the very floral
backgrounds that they put on and the
decorative numbers that they had
that really makes you feel more at ease
and you don’t expect a longer game
because of those elements yeah
i love i love arboretum it’s the designs
on it
especially the front of the box where it
has that almost like a picture frame
kind of aspect to it really adds to it
and when you
play when you finish a game of
airbrushing and all the cards are laid
out
i really love that each tree takes up
the entire card space and it almost
looks like a forest
and has these beautiful colors that kind
of uh approach it yeah arboretum is a
good one
i find like i know i know keira
mentioned the kind of space ones but
there likes a role for the galaxy and
stuff like that where they’ve got the
kind of
you know dark theme the dark colors
and then you’ve got the kind of brighter
planets you do feel like you’re
in space like you’re exploring these
planets you’re
you know you’re shipping your in and out
and everything else but
you know the whole dark themed sky
matches because like if you were if you
were playing on like brightly colored
green
tableaus you’d be going it’s not really
space is it
i mean i feel like we’re just building
little sand planets in our garden
but like then you’ve got games you know
if you pick up anything like castles of
burgundy lords of water deep
agricola agricola i say i actually don’t
know how you pronounce those
you know stone age games like that that
have a kind of almost
oil painting design to them when you
pick them up
you look at them and go this is the euro
game so
they’ve they’ve got like a they’ve got a
theme you know there’s going to be like
a bit of long-term strategies it’s going
to be a bit short back and forth or
points
and ultimately there’ll be all points
added at the end so you don’t really
know who’s winning until the final
game just like a euro game but you pick
it up and you know what it is you know
what to expect you know what
you’re gonna get with the game i feel
like games like that have
either by deliberative cooperative
effort
they’ve really leaned into uh that kind
of style and it works
it works probably because we all just
know it i’ve seen so many
games where it’s just a guy on the front
and he’s doing something where it’s like
playing a field or making a dress and i
know
just by the art style that i have to be
that man for the next
four hours and it’s gonna be a number
crunching euro game yeah
we’ll delve into owens hatred of euro
games
i like your games it’s just uh it just
requires a different attitude
ahead that i don’t have so
[Laughter]
another thing i love is sushigo i think
the cartoon
cartoony sushi style with the animated
eyes i think that really just tells
people
what your kind of game you’re going to
get if you see some sushi with some
cartoony eyes you know
it’s going to be a cute friendly game
you see the number of players in front
of the box and you’re like this is great
i’ll just pick this up
i’ll have this you know at the start or
have a few friends over whatever
maybe next year
yeah but yeah i think that’s great yeah
so uh brandon purchased it
did art work for dice numbers he did a
fantastic job yeah i think working with
your artist
is super important and making sure that
the art style is kind of agreed on
everybody
kind of communicating out there is
pretty tricky but i think we did a great
job
there’s going to be a lot of great
points in this whole thing
but the more research you do one thing i
found out recently is
doing mood boards which is a cool way of
doing it you just take a load of artwork
from you know a tv show here
comic book there just to get what you
want so like you know you take bubble
butts
kind of a whole bunch of sci-fi stuff
that you want do you like maybe roll for
the galaxy
put it on a mood board give it here just
nerd says yeah i kind of get what you’re
talking about
or he might just go what the hell is
this how do you know where i live
because you know this whole thing is
very emotional you know when it comes to
art and stuff like that it’s it’s not
you can’t describe it in the way you can
describe a ford fiesta in 1997’s
you know yeah really difficult and it
like
it’s team as well you’re thinking
fantasy or
an imagination i know like so for
example scrabble actually just has the
pieces on it
and that’s probably the simplest style
you could possibly do is like go to the
artist
well this is my game is made of squares
of letters
and just can you just make that look
nice and
that’s easy to communicate to the artist
and it results in
straightforward images but what a lot
again like
the much more advanced games or the
games that we’re really talking about in
the board game genre
they need a theme and they need like on
said you need to
demand farming in the front of the box
or the the army that’s
attacking somebody or you want
it’s more important to convey the team
if there is a team
than it is to just say well these are
the components that are in the box you
can put that on the back or you can put
that in the rule book
you you want to immerse them as quick as
possible in the
10 seconds you have while they glance
over the box so
i think the the center piece is your is
your
board game our art styles is your front
cover
and then wherever else you can put it in
is great to make it feel more like the
team yeah i totally i totally agree with
that and and
even when you said that there’s still
aspects that the artist
that does work on it still has that
ability to create something new create
something unique add their own flair
address style
so your board games are always going to
be slightly different than what you
might have imagined
and there’s always that kind of
opportunity to create something new
but yet artists would definitely need a
bit more than just
i just want this to look nice like
yeah science you know that right
the plate testing is an important thing
for figuring out art style i like
one of the things i like is multiple art
styles with different audiences
can help determine what art style works
well
or coherent in a board game and can also
help understanding rules and how
aggressive cooperative players are
so you have a board game and you have a
lot of clip art try different network
and then release those prototypes try
them out with different people
see what goes brian do you think
designers can effectively play test
their art style
ideas to get feedback from plate testers
yeah i mean absolutely you can
you can do it in a couple of different
ways as you said you can just print out
several different copies of the game and
say to people you know what you like
what works what doesn’t in this
age of social media like it or hate us
there’s a few great options out there
where
you know i’m following a couple of
different groups online of people who
you know they have
new games up and coming and they’re
going all right well you know this is
the board
here was the two color schemes i’d tried
you know which do you like which do you
prefer
and then go on you know well here’s the
numbering style here’s the lettering
style here’s some of the little
miniatures i plan for the game do you
think they work do you think they’re
excessive
and it was actually like some of them
were very clever because
not only are people you know getting
involved and giving good feedback
but people feel like they’re
contributing to the game it makes them
feel like they’re part of it so you’re
building your audience you’re getting
your background there and you have
people giving you good feedback
and also people who are going oh well
now that i’ve helped out i definitely
want to get this game when it comes out
so it’s a very good a very good way to
do it but again you know
have have your your core of the game
solid
before you start putting a lot of
artwork on it because if you ask a lot
of people which do they prefer
and they give you all their feedback and
then you come back a week later and go
i changed this whole game we’re back to
square one people are gonna get bored
and fed up
but you know it’s a good idea to go well
you know here’s two art styles i liked
which do you like don’t hammer them with
75 different
color schemes but put up a couple of the
ones that you know maybe you’ve worked
with your artist that you really like
and go you know which one appeals to you
guys
you know do you like it do you not like
it and uh it actually you know
even as as i was kind of following them
just to
just out of curiosity about the game
more than anything else but
now i’m like oh yeah i can’t believe
teddy’d eat like the purple but the blue
looks way better
and i’m like i definitely have to get us
to make sure it comes out in blue
it can be tricky if the if all the
community in
in that kind of thing like if it is red
or something like that says the purple
one is better
and you think it’s the blue you
shouldn’t give them the choice in the
first place
that could be don’t worry don’t give
them too much choice
uh kiera any tips yeah so definitely
refine your choices
pick ones that you could definitely get
behind it can be hard because
you you can’t commission like 10
different artists
to draw a card for you in each of their
different styles
so if you can i think it’s about
cultivating
a good relationship with your community
and then giving them a piece of the
artwork that you want to use in the
final design
that isn’t quite what you’re going to
use like something you’ve taken off
maybe the artist’s
portfolio or you’ve you’ve found
somewhere
and trying to fit it in so that they
could maybe
in some way visualize what it’s going to
look like in the game so like you have
to be kind of
reasonable with your resources if you’re
a small especially a small board game
company where you can’t just have
10 artists on hand that you could just
commission for one day each or whatever
you have to
you have to find a way to to balance
that so
do what you can with the resources that
you have and do post on forums and if
you have a mailing list
maybe it’s a good idea to i think that
one of our pieces was
the timing wise we didn’t want to get
the artist involved too soon
but also because it was so close to the
kickstarter that we got the artists
involved it just meant that
there was a limited amount of time on
getting feedback and changes and things
like that so
you do have to be aware of timing if you
promised on kickstarter you were going
to produce a game
in a certain time then maybe do market
research before you get to that point or
get the community engagement before that
point if you can
try a portion of your game or some small
amount of gameplay and try and play test
that
with a particular art style that you
want to try out it’s a lot of work but
it’s worth
it because once you have the airside
locked in you have the outside locked in
you’re stuck with that for the for the
rest of the journey so so
don’t take the decision lightly yeah and
there are ways of making sure that you
only do part of a thing
so like our artists can do the sketch
only of the artwork instead of the whole
thing
so if you’re thinking of a frontal box
instead of asking just to do the whole
thing you can get like a couple of
sketches of different ideas
and you can get the community involved
and then this whole process takes the
game
way longer so you’re going to be pushing
kickstarter at like six months eight
months
which can be annoying but i think if you
want to get the community involved you
want to get the artwork done i think
it’s a good idea
so but at the end of the day it is up to
the game designer to choose the art
style that they think will match and
work well
something that mixes with the mechanics
and teams effectively something you’ve
researched and know where this style is
usually used and something to play tests
really well with people that pretty much
wraps it up for choosing an art style
what sort of art styles do you love and
which best complements certain mechanics
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