The Making of a Cover

When launching a game, it's every team's goal to secure a magazine cover to kick off their marketing and PR efforts. Securing that cover is no easy task because competition amongst potentially big PC titles is fierce. When you do lock one down though, the fun begins. All you need to do is create some killer art that not only looks great, but will help sell some magazines on news stands! Here is a behind the scenes look at what went into creating our first magazine cover image.

Inspiration
To begin the creative process, PC Gamer (US) provided us with a number of images pulled from Games Workshop source books that they really liked. From these, we all gravitated towards an image of a Minotaur attacking a foot soldier (image 1) with the belief that this concept would 1) make a compelling cover and 2) best fit the layout of the magazine (image 2). However, the Minotaur is not a playable race and we wanted to feature characters that players could actually play in game.

First Concepts
The development team was hard at work on the Orcs and Dwarfs in the game and many of the assets we'd be providing the magazine would feature these two races. Thus it was decided that the cover image should feature these races as well. As to the "classes" of the characters to be represented, that was easy - Dwarf Slayer vs. Black Orc! We didn't have a lot of time to complete the cover so we turned to Petrol, an agency we have worked closely with in the past, to do the actual art. They came back with five spectacular concepts (images 3-7) that we really liked. Some were a bit to gory for a magazine cover and others weren't detailed enough, but the main issue we faced was a problem of scale. The Orc was HUGE compared to the Dwarf but the layout of the magazine made that difficult to address.

Next Steps
In the end, Concept 2 (image 4) was the runaway favorite so we dropped it into the cover layout (image 8) and began tweaking the image. The Dwarf needed a bit of work to fix the positioning of his head (he's pulling an Exorcist with his head turned all the way around) and give his face a more battle-hardened look (image 9). The Orc's face, especially his mouth, wasn't quite right so we provided additional reference to Petrol so they could match our in-game model (images 10-11).

The Final Image
When all the changes had been made, we took the final image to color (image 12). Sure it's a bit clichéd but we really liked the fire and ash in the background. However, it was a bit too "noisy" for the magazine cover and would interfere with the legibility of any text. We also had to change the red on the Orc's armor as it was too close in color to the Slayer's mohawk and beard. Finally, we provided PC Gamer with three alternate backgrounds (images 13-15) for which to choose for the final cover (image 16).

Want to get your hands on a poster-sized copy of this art? We've turned the image into a limited edition poster that you'll get for free with paid admission to the upcoming Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Paris Games Days. Click here for U.S. Games Days details, and here for Paris Games Day details. While supplies last.



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