It’s been my great pleasure over many years to work with a stunning array of amazing artists.

And in fact some of them are so far beyond our hobby in their careers that I’m humble they even deign to visit us, much less actively seek us out. Though to be honest, that’s a giant testament to the startlingly strength and continued vibrancy of both Shadowrun and BattleTech…that they bring that quality of artist to the table.

Yet one of my favorite aspects of this is when an artist blows you away. Not just in the quality of what they’re trying to do, but also regarding the depths of what they want to do to match their enthusiasm and love for a given universe.

[As an aside, while I took up the mantle of art direction after FASA closed, I’m not an art director and so when we hired on Brent Evans 6 years ago it was a huge weight off my shoulders and Brent has far elevated the art beyond my abilities. But now and then I’ll help him out when there’s just too many plates in the air, and he’s kept in the loop at all times…this is one of this times.]

For those newly following us, Catalyst is developing Shadowrun: Hostile Takeover, a board game, for publication next year. And, well, it’s a board game, so we need a game board. And due to the nature of the game, the game board needs to be rather unique in it’s presentation. An abstract representation of movement around the Seattle megaplex, while still being incredibly appealing to look at for several hours of play. We made reference to Arkham Horrors’ brilliant game board numerous times in our various discussions.

Amongst the various art details I sent to the artist, was the following:

Some of the most “immersive” Shadowrun shots we have are the big cityscapes of SR5…the proverbial “flow of neon” style of look. That got us thinking that even taking the game elements out, it would likely create a very unusual and total Shadowrun look if we mirrored a nighttime shot of the city as the background element of the game board.

I then provided links to a few real-world arial shots of Seattle, such as this:

And then I provided a shot of what ultimately we’re hoping will be captured as the background of the game board elements (i.e. that “flow of neon” that just screams cyberpunk):

Of course one of the things I was most concerned with is that there has never been a really good, detailed map of Seattle for Shadowrun. 25 years this game has existed, and beyond some moderately detailed excerpts here and there, there’s simply not a good overview of exactly where everything is. But I was confident that for this we wouldn’t need those details. After all, we’re just looking for a vaguely Seattle area overview that’s super cool and atmospheric like the above.

The artist immediately responded he was up for the challenge and so I went on with my other work and a week or two later I got the following progress in that floored me to the core.

Are you kidding me?! He’s build the whole Seattle megaplex…from scratch! Cause he wants it to be accurate!!!! And this is for something that will just appear behind the elements that actually are part of the board game?!

So after amazed praise, we provide some feedback and this morning I got the next stage of the progress:

Once more…gak! Are you kidding me?!

And in case you’re wondering, this is 25 inches wide at 200 dpi…so that little color excerpt above…yeah, looks like this when I blow it up numerous times:

And while I feel like I’m repeating myself, let’s once again be clear…this is all going to be covered up by the graphics that actually matter for the mechanics of the board game. The artist is doing this unbelievable level of detail…cause that’s what he does…and it’s Shadowrun.

Dang…just dang.

Needless to say, we’ll be taking this as the coolest and most accurate map ever and folding it into a poster map in the Seattle Box Set coming end of next year…‘cause this is just way, WAY too awesome to leave buried in the background of a board game.

Fans of our games…are…just…awesome!

Randall