When you are working on the art of a board game can you give us a quick overview of your creative or thought process and has this changed at all since you first started?

I like to work closely with the client and understand the needs of the gameplay to come up with a great solution. A project always starts with research. First broadly, everything to do with the theme. Then narrowing down to the different elements required for the illustrations. I make a new Pinterest board for each project and look at as many different approaches and sources as possible to get away from the obvious.

If you are doing a Wild West game there are a ton of reference points. Partly these cliches are helpful as it helps the player connect to the IP and understand aspects of the game easier. However, looking sideways to Pirates or Samurai might give us some new ideas for character types or looking at 18th century American landscape paintings can help us get beyond the colour palette of Spaghetti Westerns and yet still feel authentic. Ideally the project isn’t rushed, then there is time to explore the theme with a range of sketches and different design solutions.

Once a basic look and feel is worked out I do sketches for all of the elements of the game. Mostly this process is digital, even the sketching. Though if the weather is nice I will use pencil and paper on a beer terrace. Sketches are loose as I like to keep some of the fun for painting. It keeps the illustrations alive and stops that part of the process being paint by numbers. Sketches are followed by rough colours studies. Once these get approved the final illustrations are done. It is Photoshop all the way. It's the fastest way to work for me and allows me to make changes both quickly and offer the publisher variations where needed. I used to do the whole sketch and scan process years ago but learning to use a Wacom tablet well enough to sketch has made that process a bit redundant. It was too slow and fussy.