Hey hey, it’s time for some major Arcade Spirits news!
It’s been a long week of combing through portfolios, weighing pros and cons, debating back and forth with my co-author Aenne. But I believe we’ve settled on a sweet roster of artists to start replacing those doofy temp assets with real, actual, paid-for artwork. Without further ado, I’d like to announce the artists!
CHARACTER ART: Molly Nemecek (Twitter) (Webcomic)
It didn’t take long for Molly to win us over. While her art style isn’t what I expected I’d crave for Arcade Spirits, I decided it give her the old matchbook art test (“Can you draw this parrot?”) with Naomi in the place of a parrot… and she knocked it out of the park with a slew of really great variations on the character to pick from. That sealed the deal for this skeptic, to be certain.
Adorable. We’re looking forward to working with Molly to really fine-tune and nail the art style of Arcade Spirits, and to bring our cast of characters to life!
BACKGROUND ART: Taylor Rose (Tumblr)
Taylor’s beautiful natural and surrealistic landscapes certainly caught my eye. But can she draw arcades, I wondered? So, I asked her. And this was her reply.
And that’s only a one-hour sketch with no real refinement or tweaking. In order words, she’s already this good and this isn’t even her final form. I look forward to her evolving into Tayloruru, the Legendary Art Pokemon.
PIXEL ART: Justin Baldwin (Twitter)
I feel kind of ashamed having Justin on this project. Why? Because he is too good for us. He’s super professional with tons of game industry experience and some amazeballs pixel art landscapes which make me want to fall on my knees and weep. He’ll be doing artwork for Mr. Moopy’s Magic Maze and Fist of Discomfort.
GRAPHIC DESIGN: Michael Borel (Website)
When you need flyers, posters, logos, and fake corporate branding… who you gonna call? How about a professional graphic designer? Seriously, check out his digital art and his stickers, he’s got a wide variety of really clean work in there.
ADDITIONAL GAME ART: Emma Rust (Tumblr)
Skilled in a wide variety of traditional and digital styles, Emma will be providing additional art for the Wyvern’s Keep game in Arcade Spirits, and it’s going to be just lovely.
There you have it, folks! The Arcade Spirits art crew, in living color. And these quickie sketches you see are just scraping the tip of the iceberg, to mix metaphors in a horrible fashion! It only gets better from here.
We’ll be integrating their work into our game as it’s made available. Want to be the first to see? Join the Patreon! For just $1+ you get one-week-early access to these developer blog posts, and $5+ gets you monthly demo builds as they become available. If you contribute $25 or more over the lifetime of the game’s development, you get a free copy of the final game! What do you have to lose!? Well, other than a few bucks. Sign up today! And if you can’t afford to sign up, we got you covered — select pieces of art will be posted here to this dev blog after Patrons get their sneak peeks.
Thanks so much for your support. Arcade Spirits is soaring!