Buckle your rocket harnesses for this one folks... I am thrilled to announce a galactic sized board game brought to you by OCS and the fine folks at Keymaster Games, launching through Kickstarter soon... Space Park!
In Space Park (designed by Henry Audubon) players blast across the galaxy to explore exotic cosmic destinations, collecting crystals and badges as they work to become the galaxy's next great space explorer! For those of you who may not know, Keymaster Games publishes board games with captivating experiences and elegant designs. When they brought me on to bring this fantastic game to life, I was beyond excited.
Here today you'll see the first location of Space Park called Starlight Station. This is the flagship image which is being used as the box art and I'm here today to show you how it came about! So strap yourselves in and let's launch into the creation of this station...
Sketches
The first step in crafting this destination was lots and lots of brainstorming. I quickly found the challenge with drawing space scenes in black and white was it didn't allow me to explore light in the way I wanted to. I wanted to actually paint with light so I decided to produce a series of concept sketches in color to really establish the mood, look, and feel of the Station. Once I had the concept sketches in place, I did a handful of modifications, repaints, and rough pencils to land on the final composition.
Creation Process
For those of you who have read about my painting process before, you know I typically move onto a black and white phase to establish my shapes, textures, lighting, etc. before moving onto color. For this project, I decided to rid myself of shackles of my typical process and paint more freely in color. It was quite an exhilirating experience working directly in color, but it was one I was excited to try simply because it allowed me to paint atmospheric effects which would not have come through in the same way working in black and white. Here's a look at what the initial background looked like when I knew this process was going to work...
Not only did I alter my approach with the introduction of color into this step, I also explored tons of textures beyond what I typically utilize in my work. I really wanted these pieces to have an organic feel to them and my goal was to utilize texture in a way that would help push lots of depth into the piece.
Final Illustration
Once I realized the background for this piece was working the way I wanted it to, it was time to really pour the details into the Station to bring it to life. As a kid, I always loved when illustrators put lots of details into their work that you would only see if you explored the image. That idea was such a fitting tie in with the overall concept of the game that I knew it was the approach I was going to take with this one. In the end, I'm excited where it landed and the image really gave us a first look into the world of Space Park. And the best part of all is that this is just the beginning... there are a number of other exotic locations we're working on next!
Big thanks to Mattox Shuler, Kyle Key, and Henry Audubon for the opportunity to work with them on such an amazing project. I was enamored with their last game, Campy Creatures, with the phenomenal artist Josh Emrich so the opportunity to work with them on this one meant the world to me.
And now for some detail shots! Thank you all so much for following along and be sure to stay tuned... there may just be some prints of these pieces launching soon.
