Artist and illustrator Nicolas Delort created this Castlevania: Symphony of the Night art print based on the video game of the same name, under official license from Konami Digital Entertainment. He created this illustration with ink on scratchboard and translated that to a 3-color screen print.



The print is available in two editions, a standard version and a large-size luxury edition with an extra gold color. Both version also come with a special enamel pin created by the artist Nicolas Delort as long as supplies last! Both the standard and luxury versions are hand-numbered and come with an artist-signed Certificate of Authenticity.



About the standard edition

The dimensions quoted are for the image size. The paper size of the standard edition is 20 x 28 inch | 71 x 51 cm so it fits most standard frames

3- color screen print

Comes with an enamel pin created by the artist (as long as supplies last)



About the luxury edition

The dimensions quoted are for the image size and not the paper size

4 -color screen print

Comes with an enamel pin created by the artist (as long as supplies last)



"I've been a Castlevania fan since the early Game Boy games", says Nicolas Delort. "Then it were the SNES games and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was one of the first games I played on the PlayStation. I didn't have one personally but most of my friends did, and I have good memories of going over to my friends to play it. The artwork that Ayami Kojima made for the game is also one of the things that got me into drawing. I spent so much time copying her art of Alucard in my school notebooks!"



"Video game art has always been a part of my path as an artist", says Nicolas Delort. "With this art print I definitely wanted to pay homage to the art of Ayami Kojima, while still adding my personal touch to it. I reinterpreted the characters in my "style" while still being faithful to Kojima's original design. I also tried to combine all the iconic elements of the game into a coherent composition, with strong shapes and moody lighting."



About Konami’s Castlevania

Castlevania is one of those titles that truly deserves its classic video game status. The horror-themed action-adventure series kicked off in 1986 when Japanese studio and publisher Konami launched the eponymous first game, and has been around ever since. Selling in the millions to a worldwide audience, and successfully branching out into anime and manga, Castlevania seared itself into the collective memory, forever a pop-cultural reference for each and any medium offering vampire hunting at the loud crack of a whip. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997) is seen as one of the highlights in the series.



The series’ initial appeal isn’t hard to see. One of the very first games to offer a combination of a platforming mechanic with a certain difficulty and a dark(-ish), gothic setting, it tickled not only those who looked for games that challenged them, but also those who liked the theme and atmosphere. The side-scrolling adventure of Simon Belmont hunting down Count Dracula in his demonic castle, lashing out his whip as he climbed stairs and traversed dark corridors, all combined into an experience that at the time was unique.



Even though the Castlevania experience was first created for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), an 8-bit computer system that came with many limitations compared to today’s computers, it was obvious Konami’s artists had pushed the game’s style to its limits. In an era when video games were mostly colorful toys for kids, Castlevania's horror-theme was seen as a "mature" offering. Despite the NES' limitations in graphics, Konami's artists produced a convincing set of dark castle corridors and cellars, packed them chock full of monsters, bats, spiders and skeletons for the player to fight, and decked them out with props like cobwebs, holy water, crosses, and chandeliers. The atmosphere was further embraced by the game music. Although the composers suffered from the same technical limitations of the NES as the visual artists, they succeeded in bringing something fresh to the table: music written in minor keys, enhanced with gothic and baroque motifs.



The ruleset put in place by the first couple of games would inform much of what followed over the years. The visual baseline would be found in time-worn Hollywood tropes considering haunted castles and monsters, and yet over time Castlevania would develop a visual identity of its own. Much of this is owed to the work of famed character designer Ayami Kojima, on board since Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997), one of the standout titles in the long line of games. A self-taught artist with a knack for finding strong character designs that complemented the established line-up of Medusa’s and Frankenstein's, she brought the Japanese Bishōnen aesthetic of youthful and androgynous characters to Castlevania’s design style, but without turning it into the kind of teenage-romantic camp that give Bishōnen such a bad reputation in the West. Applying Japanese elegance to European vampire fantasies, she redefined Castlevania’s visual style to astonishing effect, creating a coherent artistic whole that has lasted ever since.



