Six stages, seven weeks
This is the schedule for a single box cover. Card runs and boards go through the same six stages on a longer clock.
Week 1
Brief and thumbnails
You send me the game, the format and the mood. I send back four thumbnails at postcard size in pencil, and we throw away three of them.
Week 2
The rough
The surviving thumbnail becomes a full-size pencil rough with the type area blocked out, printed at 20mm and pinned across the studio to check that it still reads.
Week 3
Ink line
Brush and ink over the pencil on toned paper. This is the last stage where a composition change is cheap, so this is where I want your developer in the room.
Week 4
Flats
Flat gouache under the line, no modeling at all. The whole palette gets settled here, against your box spine and your logo rather than in isolation.
Weeks 5 to 6
Finish
Modeling, texture and the colored pencil work that makes it look like a person made it. Two of the three rounds of changes live in this stage.
Week 7
Delivery
Scanned at 1200dpi and cleaned, then delivered as a layered file, a print-ready CMYK version, an RGB flat and a printed thumbnail test sheet.
What changes between a rough and a cover
Drag the handle. In both of these the composition survived and almost nothing else did.
Coldwater Bell, start to finish
The same 300mm square, photographed at each of the four stages that actually change the picture.
The unglamorous half
What I draw with
- Gouache Schmincke and Holbein, one worn palette
- Colored pencil Luminance, for the last five percent
- Paper toned Fabriano, 300gsm, always mid-value
- Ink brush and stick ink, no technical pens
- Scale everything painted at twice print size
What you get
- Layered working file PSD, 300dpi, type area kept clear
- Print file CMYK, bleed and trim marks included
- Flat RGB for the store page and the campaign
- Thumbnail test sheet your cover printed at 20mm
- All of it licensed for the uses we wrote down
How I test it
- Printed at 20mm and pinned across the room
- Grayscale check, every cover, every time
- On a phone at store thumbnail size
- Against your spine and your logo, never on white
- Cards at 40mm before they are finished
Working with you
- Kickoff call 45 minutes, with the developer if you have one
- Thumbnails inside seven days, always
- Three rounds of changes inside the fee
- Working in Polish, English and German
- One game at a time, which is why the calendar is short
The calendar opens in March.
Send me the game, the format and the date it has to be at the printer. If March is too late I will tell you in the first reply.