I was also very fortunate to have people relate to my Vast art. There are SO MANY new board games, and a huge spectrum of art styles. To help us stand out I tried to embrace a line-art heavy style a la Advanced Dungeon & Dragons monster manuals, but with a vibrant color palette. We wanted to keep Vast looking accessible and family-friendly, which meant keeping the goblins looking more mischievous than violent, and making sure the heroine protagonist was fully clothed. I get a lot of comments from the board game community about how appreciative they are about the sensible armor for the Knight.

Vast was when I first started going to game conventions too. That was a whole new world for me. I think if you would have asked me 10 years ago how many people there were in the US that were REALLY into board games I would have estimated less than a thousand, haha. I just had no idea! I've always loved board games but most of my experience was with Risk and Monopoly and whatever was in my grandma's closet. I'll never forget my first Gen Con on that Thursday morning when an older gentleman struggled a little to lift up the Vast box and asked "How much is this?" and I sheepishly answered $60, not wanting to break his heart. He said, "I'll take one" and his son rounded the corner with 2 enormous bags full to bursting with what must have been thousands of dollars of board games. On Thursday Morning. The first few minutes of the convention! I've fully embraced the board game lifestyle since then, and I have a modest little collection of games, mostly for playing with my wife, my siblings and my adult friends since my kids are all pretty little.

How has playtesting your art influenced what you create? What lessons have you learned and is there anything in particular you're more mindful of now?

It's fun to see people play test a board game while you're still working on the art for it because you get almost immediate feedback on what people are interested in. Especially with Vast, when the rules for each player are so different, players are choosing roles based on theme and aesthetic. Unless you have a pretty good understanding of how Vast: The Crystal Caverns Goblins work going in, you probably aren't going to say "Oh, I'll be the green guys because I like push your luck mechanics." You're a lot more likely to hear something like "Oh! I want to be this Dragon" because of the theme and the art. That's where I think it's important that you're doing the game designer's work justice. How a game works isn't always immediately clear, but you can say a lot about what the players will feel like by giving them at-a-glance information through visual communication.