Amazing cover art... but how did we get there?
Hey IndieDB!
I'm David and I'm solo developing Netherguild - a strategy roguelite dungeon crawler.
About a month and a half ago, I was searching for a cover artist for my game.
Why, you might ask?
That's because supposedly games on Steam do A LOT better with drawn cover art rather than a using a random screenshot from the game as a cover.
Also because having cover art for my own game would be awesome.
I searched a lot in sites like Artstation and Behance, but I couldn't find anything that really fit my needs - since my game uses stylized art, and most of the art I found was on the more realistic side, or not the kind of style I'm really looking for.
I was worried I wouldn't find someone who could do justice Netherguild's voxel art in 2D...
Then, I found this!
Cover art for "Miner Meltdown" by Victor Estivador
- Cartoony characters with cute proportions? check! ✓
- Fantastic looking art? check! ✓
Also...
- Bonus: Underground theme...? check!!! ✓
Needless to say I felt like this would be a great fit, so I contacted the artist - a cool Brazillian guy named Victor.
After a while, everything was set up and we started working on the art!
Initially, Victor sent me a few options.
With this one, I feel like he was just figuring out how to interpret these characters in his style.
With this image, he was interpreting Netherguild's main menu in his style. I liked it a lot, but I was also worried that you can't get a proper view of the wolf-hat ranger in the back.
(Main menu without the UI, for reference).
With this sketch, he was putting his own spin on it. I went with that sketch since I liked it the most!
If you know Netherguild, you may also realize that it indirectly uses the motif of "descending" with the stairs.Despite the fact that there are no stairs in the game. Yet.
Another thing I liked was the range of intensity of expression between characters - with the knight looking focused on the road ahead and the ranger (wolf hat) looking up in wonder.
Then...
I love the shine in the character's eyes here, and the wolf hat feels so alive!
The background was going to be done in 3D at first and then sketched over in 2D to give it a bit more detail and life.
This version looked final. And it looked good. There was just one problem...
When I put it on the Steam page, it looked too dark! It was so out of place compared to my brightly colored voxel art...
So Victor used some color correction magic to get this:
I'm really happy with how it turned out.
What do you think?
Check out Netherguild on Steam (wishlisting it helps tremendously) or join the Discord server if you want to read the weekly updates I post there. Like my recent posts about how Netherguild got its new title design.
You can check out Victor's Instagram where he occasionally posts amazing art as well.
Also... I might post an article about the naming of Netherguild / how to name your game next week...
Be sure to follow Netherguild on IndieDB if you don't want to miss it, and have a great day (:
