Creating Board Game Art was an Unexpected Opportunity
When I entered college, “design an entire board game from scratch” was never on the table. But then, there I was sitting in a meeting room of our residence hall, surrounded by my friends, with an in-progress art minor and an opportunity: Factions of Sol.
When it came to Mark IV Games, I had some previous experience in social media marketing for an NPO club and as a Production Manager for a theatre company. I was excited to put it to use, but when it came to games specifically I felt useless. When I had game nights pre-college, we played video games. Any board games were Cards Against Humanity or Monopoly, with Dungeons and Dragons being the most intense game I played. But we had no money and needed board game art. So, I became the art director. My role goes a little deeper than a normal art director’s would– I manage our contracted artists, but I also do a ton of hands-on designing myself! So how does that work?
The Production Line Process for Factions of Sol's Art
Each drawing starts on paper. Sometimes there’s a structure and sometimes there’s not. For settler cards, I was just given the name. For a faction like Quantum Tunnelers, one of several factions in Faction of Sol, I was given a description.
The description for Quantum Tunnelers is as follows:
“Quantum Tunnelers – miners meet mad scientist, space-age pickaxe, hair is frizzy, covered in soot and have goggles on, sci-fi miners essentially, tunnel through space-time, tool to do that would be the sci-fi pickaxe, incorporate portals, possibly old times train conductor with the pocket watch and such, working men”
It’s not particularly formal, because those are my own written notes. Each description was given verbally over Zoom, with the Faction of Sol team brainstorming together on which parts of their individual visions they feel fit the vibe in a way that doesn’t clash. They worked on finding a consensus and I summarized it.
Step 1: Find Inspiration
This is when the Googling starts. I take my notes or my immediate thoughts and plug them into Google Images as keywords. For Quantum Tunnelers I had words to work with— “mad scientist,” “cave miners,” “train conductor.” Often, however, I take my spin on it, something I want to add. For the Quantum tunneler ship, for example, I had no team guidance on what that should look like. So my Googling went more with my own thoughts. I wanted to dig into that idea of tunneling through spacetime (pun intended) without losing the sense of sci-fi, so I focused my image research on existing media that had that. For example, the Star Trek series, a show similarly about exploration through space. How did they set up their ships? What aspects were important to each function of the ship?
So, if we take a look at the Quantum Tunneler ship, you’ll see inside the ship there is a control center similar to that of the bridge in Star Trek. Above it, we have three viewing decks. These decks were inspired by Joss Whedon’s Avengers movie. The Helicarrier in the movie had a two-tiered bridge, separated by a step and railing, and the ship was floor to ceiling windows. I compared my more specific searches with a general search of 1950s comic book ships and the one on the page was born. Or at least, it was formed in my head. Now, I just had to translate that to paper.
Step 2: Make a Sketch
Drawing people is insanely hard, any artist will echo that. I take reference images of poses and download them to my iPad, then I draw the skeletal structure of that person in the image, using my iPad like a Lightbox, for speed and to be sure the proportions aren’t off. The image is then pushed to the side and I build the body shape I want on this stick figure. Finally, I add the details—clothing creases, pant leg flares, boot thickness. This can be time-consuming, especially if the person is wearing something that radically changes how their body would look (but I try to have a bit of foresight for that kind of stuff and build that extra bulk in earlier). Once all that is cleaned up, I upload it to Google Drive.
In the Google Drive folder, the entire team of Mark IV Games can view my sketch. They leave comments detailing what reads, what doesn’t read, what could be stronger or outright removed. From here, the sketch goes to one of two places.
Step 3: Add Color and Consult Contractor
After the first draft, we could be ready to add color. This is rare, but does happen, and in this case I would transfer it over to Roxanne’s folder. Roxanne is an artist here at Northwestern who we’ve recruited as a freelancer, so I’m not doing all the art myself. She takes my sketch, digitizes it into Adobe Illustrator, and does the line art and color. Not every sketch that goes to her is perfect, often they come with minor tweaks: an expression change (if they have a face in the original sketch at all), the shape of hands/fingers, a mistaken proportion. Little things she can fix as she goes! From then on, it goes back and forth between the Faction of Sol team and Roxanne, till we get a version of it we can put in the game.
But, let’s say it’s not ready for Roxanne. Well, a similar process occurs. I take the sketch, adjust it or redo it, depending on the severity of the change, re-upload it, and rinse and repeat until it’s ready! The changes I make are major—outfit changes, pose changes, prop changes, etc. Things that change the entire look of the card.
I Have Fallen in Love with Designing Board Game Art
We have a lot of fun here at Mark IV Games putting this stuff together. Half our meetings are spent brainstorming and building on top of each other to create the next, crazy conception that sets our cards apart from the rest of the board games out there. We want our style to reflect the fun we had in creating the pieces! Art is something I love, I’m even minoring in it, so having this set-out time in my week to sit down and practice is heavenly. Plus, there’s a lot of artistic freedom that comes with the job, something I feel blessed to have. Interested to see more? Want to playtest the game? Check out the Factions of Sol page on our website, by clicking right here! Have more questions or insights? Comment below, search Factions of Sol on our blog for other team member’s posts or follow us on our Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.