How to Work With An Artist to Get a Good Capsule Artist

All right. Uh, here's the deal. Um, my site sucks. This is my course web page and it it sucks. Um, it uh it looks like corporate art. Like I just got this for free off Unsplashed, you know? It's like somebody took a picture of a light bulb. It's not even clean. It's like a dusty light bulb. Like clean it before you do the photography. Anyway, I need a new site and I had this idea. So, I always tell people you need to hire an artist for your capsule and I need an artist for my page. I thought I'd combine those because here's the thing is I have a theory that a lot of people don't want to hire an artist to buy a capsule because it's intimidating. Yes, it costs money. It costs a lot of money. But I think it's also intimidating on how do you talk to an artist? How do you, you know, buy art? How do you coach them on what you want? It's it's intimidating. Artists are like so cool. And a lot of people, especially like if you're a coder or you've worked in corporate America, you might not know how artists work and that sort of thing. And so I got an idea. I hired an artist to make

new art for my site, a game developer/artist who's made some of the best capsule art. And we're going to do this live. I am going to commission art from this guy. I'll tell you in a second who it is. And I'm going to walk you through the process step by step of how you talk to an artist. I'm going to have him on the call live. We're going to go through this. I'm going to show you like how comps come back, comp how do you request it, what even is a comp and like what a thumbnail is, all this stuff. We're going to go through it step by step and it's going to be a multi-part series and I'm going to show you step by step of how you work with an artist to get the right results and not hate it, not lose your money and all that stuff. Okay, so here we go. Let me get you right into the game. I'm going to show you exactly how to how to hire an artist and how to actually talk to them. So, let's do this. All right. So, uh here's here's a cool thing about it. I I know it sounds terrible uh to like have to

like hire somebody and like talk them through what your vision is and all that stuff, but it's actually really cool. Like, you get to be a Medici. That's why I love hiring artists. Like, you are a patron of the arts. When you hire a capsule artist, you get to be like a patron artist. You get to like talk to like Da Vinci and be like, "Hey, uh, let's have some muscly dudes uh like holding the hand of God or something." I I don't know what it is, but that is what a Medici is. And you get to be one when you commission artists. Like you can tell your friends, see, oh yeah, yeah, I'm commissioning an artist. You know, I got to talk to my artist. Sorry, I got to go. I got a little phone call with my artist. It's cool. It's worth it. And I know it's intimidating, so I'm going to show you step by step how I do it. This is not the be all end all. I've commissioned a lot of capsules in the past. I've done probably like three or four I've I've worked with three or four artists to make capsules, different artists, different styles, and for my old games, and I'm going to do it again for this

one. And so, I'm going to walk you through step by step how I do it. This isn't the agreed upon way. There's there's no there's no standard, but I've talked to a couple artists, you know, after like, how was and they're like, "I really like how you did it, Chris. You did a good job in telling me what you wanted." I'm not saying I'm perfect. I'm not saying this is the only way. You might even be an artist and be like, "Chris, that sucks. Don't don't do it that way." Maybe, but I've had a lot of artists say they like it. And I actually studied art history. That's how I know who an adichi is. I studied art history in school. I have a minor in art history. And I took a lot of studio classes. I've been through critiques in college where other cool hipsters yell at you. I've been through it, so I know what what it's like to talk to an artist a little bit. I've never been paid to draw something. So, that sets me apart. I've never done that. Uh, but anyway, so that's what that's that's my bonafides. Let's get into it. Okay, so who did I hire? I did John Nielsen. I hired him, uh, to do my this art for my new course,

uh, how to market a game wish list and visibility masterass. I've known John for a while. Uh, he first did a he used to work for Hot Frog and he would just do random illustrations and I did a giveaway where I gave my art. I gave a couple keys to the to the forager community because we're both made in Game Maker and stuff. And so I just gave some keys away and I was like, "Hey, here's a promo. Just give keys away. I was trying to be like a cool dev. It doesn't really work, but it's still it's a great way to network with other devs." And so I gave keys away to the Hot Frogs uh forager community and as a promo because John worked for Hot Frog at the time. He did a promo piece of art. It was my game Zombie King. I was giving away Zombie King. And so he did the art here. Here's here's a picture of it right here like this. See that's his art. I didn't commission him. He he was working for Hot Frog at the time, but that was the first time I saw John Nielsen's art and I was like, "Wow, that looks so good." I just like his art. It looks like a video game that doesn't exist, even though he's made video games. It just looks like It just looks

like a cool video game. It's like the Uber video game. Like whenever I picture a video game in my head, it actually looks like John Nielsson's art. Like anytime somebody describes to me like, "Oh, you're like farming and zombies come out, so you have to beat the zombies before you continue farming." Whenever I hear that, the pictures that are being drawn in my brain are John Nielson's art. I I just he he just fits with my vibe of what the video game looks like. Is video game. Anyway, that's what that's what John and I love. The guy is so nice. Okay, so here's the other thing. How do you find an artist? That's the first question I always get. Here's a couple options. Number one, here's how to get an artist. You just look for games on Steam that you like. Like, I love that capsule art. Look through a lot of games. filter for tags using VG insights or something or Steam DB and find games that are like yours, same genre, and just scroll through all the capsule art until you find one that you like. Then find that studio on

Twitter for the capsule that you like and say, "Who did your capsule art? I love it." You're that's the best thing because sometimes artists just finding a good artist isn't always helpful because you want an artist who does commercial work like capsules. Sometimes you'll find an artist and they're like, "Oh, I I only do concept art. I don't do this capsule thumbnail stuff. I don't do that." It's a special skill that's you have to be a good illustrator and you have to have a good sense of what design looks like that sells. So, you have to have a little bit of a commercial angle, but still have that artistic ability. So, that's why I say start with people who have already done capsule art and who've worked with legitimate games. Because here, and I'll be honest, here's the hardest part about working with an artist is finding one who is responsive. I have the reason I was like I've worked with like four or five artists. There are artists where I found them and I worked with them and they just ghosted me. Sometimes artists are flaky. Not John, not any artist specific. Sometimes

you'll be communicating with the emailing, emailing, emailing and then they just disappear and you're like where are you? And you like keep emailing like, "Hey, one somebody I paid first." And then I kept contacting them and contacting. They just dropped off the face of the earth and they never finished my art. And I was like, "Hey, can you just finish this? Let's just call it quits. Just giving you whatever you got and I'll take it." It was not a pleasant experience. Sometimes artists just they just kind of flake. And sometime I'm not not against all artists. It's just there's a high propensity of people flaking on you when you're trying to work with artists. What my advice is when you contact these random people who are like, "Oh, who did your capsule art?" And if they're like, "Yeah, it was this person." And you contact them. I contact like 10 artists at the same time. And that's what I did for this. I mean, I like John, but John could have been busy. So, I contacted about five artists and John was the first to respond. I say, "Whoever's the first artist to respond, I mean, wait a week just to see if some maybe somebody's on vacation." But you want it's it's more valuable to have a responsive artist who just gets right back to you. And John is freaking awesome about this. John is like on it.

Like his emails come in within the same day. I'll email him in the same day he responds. That is so valuable. You have no idea how valuable that is. So if you're an artist, answer your emails. Answer your damn emails. So many artists, they never answer their emails or any response. I don't know why they don't. But anyway, so I prize an artist who is responsive over the one who's the best. Like the best art, but John's both. John is both very good artist and is responsive. Okay. So, reach out to like five or six artists once you kind of track them down and get them. The other thing is I do maintain a list of capsule artists that we kind of know are good. Well, we know they're all good, but sometimes the reason I say kind of good is sometimes artists get busy. So, head over in the link below. I link to capsule artists who are open to doing art. Okay? It's on my website. It's a resource that I keep track of. John's on that list. Um, but you never know if they're like in the middle of a commission or maybe they're taking a break. They're not doing personal work like that, you know, one-on-one work. They may be working for somebody who

won't allow them to do other work. You never know. So, I always say contact like five or six artists and say, "Hey, I'm doing a capsule. I'm doing a capsule. I need help. Are you open? Are you available?" So, that's all I do. Don't don't I just say, and what my prompt for uh John was, hey, I'm I need artwork that's 4K in size. You know, the 4K pixel resolution. I gave it out. I can't remember what the actual pixel, but it's 4K resolution. It's for my site. It's I want it to look like a capsule. I want your art style just like what you do. Do your typical thing. I don't want anything weird like that's not your art style. I want your art style and I want that. That's all I did. That was basically my email to him. I said, "Are you available soon to start?" Cuz then give him the day deadline. So again, you just give them the brief or you could just say, "I'm doing a steam capsule." So you say, "Doing a steam capsule just like your art style. I need it in the next two months or something. Give them at least a month or two to fit in. Don't say I need it tomorrow. They'll just ignore you because that's so much pressure. Give them a month or two. Reach out and if they say yes, they

respond. I'm available. Then we go to phase two. Okay? And I'll show you in just a second what phase two is. That's where you write the brief. And I'm going to show you how to write the brief today. So you do that. Oh, you also want to ask the rates. Just say, "Hey, what are your rates for something in the project like this?" Get their rates. Again, it's going to be in the range of like 500 to about a,000, maybe 2,000. I've seen some go up to 3,000, but these were guys that were like they had covers on Blizzard games, okay? They they were like a a fantasy illustrator and it was like a a freaking oil painting. Uh, so it goes up from there, but it's right around five to about $1,500 is what I'd say. And it is worth it. This a capsule is one of the most important assets. And the thing is, um, because streamers will pull assets from your capsule and use them for their thumbnails. So, you're actually, when you're hiring a good artist, you're actually designing thumbnails, uh, for YouTubers to cover your game. And YouTubers love it when you have a good thumbnail. And guess what? This is

This guy makes good thumbnails. Okay, so you do that. And and then if you hear back, um, and what I did with John is I just paid him up front because I know this guy. I was like, "Here it is." Oh, I also had him design my text. I'm doing a new text for wish list invisibility class 3.0. I want to do that text. You should do that too. Don't just do the image of like your character or something. Also do the art because I've seen great thumbnails designed and then they just slap like comic sand serif or like some rainbow like Helvetica font on it and it looked awful. You just basically ruined the awesome thumbnail that the artist did by doing your own text. So I highly recommend you hire the artist to do that. John, he said, "Oh, if you want me to do taxes a little bit more." He charged me a little bit more. I was like, "Fine. Now, I know John." And so, I just paid him up front. I just paid him the full amount upfront for this. And um I would for you since you don't know John or like John John's a good guy. But if you don't know your R, you haven't worked with them, I would do 50/50, like pay up front, 50%, and then

50% on the back once they deliver because you never know if they're they're trustworthy. Like I said, I've been burned in the past. Sometimes artists just disappear. Okay, so that's how you do it. Um, let me give you a little bit more info John about the quote and everything about how we did this. Um, this is why I love John and his art. Let me show you. Uh, this is his game Witchhand. He's like, not only is John like an awesome artist, but he's also a great game designer. He designed this game Witchhand, which did very well. So, look it up on Steam. It's one of those card games, not a rogike deck builder. It's one of those like resource management card games that I always like. I think it's really hot. Actually wrote an article. Search my blog for it. I'll link it down below. Okay, so which hand? Uh, he did the logo and everything. Looks good. This is This is his art style. Look at this. You always know it's an artist who did the text because the the first letter is bigger than that. And they always add some sort of little decorator here. Like he underlined it and he put little moons. That's how you know an artist did the text is when they when they when they

just add a little extra like when I s I find when I can always tell when a non artist did their logo text when they just like hammered out it's all caps all the text is the same size it takes an artist to make the text I think they call it dropping and then they rise above this and then this it just looks so good and they and it's white I find coders who make their own castles always add like a rainbow paint finish to it and then they add all these drop shadows. There's a very very subtle I think drop shadow to this. Very subtle. When a when a coder does it, they do like the hardest drop shadow. It it's like it's like lifted 5 feet off the page. It's like the hardest roughest thing to don't do your own text. It's a very subtle art. I think this is almost more important than this. You could you can I'm not advising you do, but if somebody were to AI art something, you can't AI art the text. it was just not going to look at the logo text. You have to at very bare minimum do it. Don't do AI art. People know people know when

it's AI. Um but do the text. So anyway, so this is his game which hand. Isn't it cool? It's such a cool game. Um he also did John also did capsules for Die in the Dungeon Hit Rogike. It's not a deck builder, but it's a rogike dice builder. Uh I wrote about him. Uh the die in the dungeon guy with the itch.io article that I wrote. I'll link down below. But um um John did this logo too. Really good, really good guy. Again, they know. Look, see the first letter is bigger than the others. That's how you just know. That's how you know a professional artist did it. And then they put this nice decorator in for the O. But that's how you know. And see, they also it's called kerning, right? Or is it letting Yeah, kerning is between letting is this uh letting is this in between. See, if you don't know what kerning and letting le is in text, don't do your own logo. Okay. But notice how the T overlaps with the H and the N. They're like squished so tight. They kind of overlap. He knows how to do it. He knows you don't. That's

why you hire an artist. So, always do the text. And again, subtle drop shadow. Subtle drop shadow. Not ins and not insane. And he made the text white. Making the text white is such a baller move. Anyway, that's Logus. All right. So, I asked John, I was like, "What's the best artist brief?" Okay. Because you need to make an artist brief to tell John or your artist what you want because you can't just say, "I don't know, here's my game. Make me a thumbnail." You have to tell them what you want. And so I talked to John. I said, "What's the best artist brief you've got you got?" And he said, "Die in the dungeon was a really, really good one." And uh I talked to the Die in the Dungeon guys. I was like, "John said you had the best brief. you mind if I grab it and just show the audience your logo and how you built this thing? And he's like, "Yeah, yeah, go ahead." He's like, "I did build it." Because Die in the Dungeon I think was published by Hyper Train Digital and the the developers of Die in the Dungeon said, "Yeah, it was kind of a co collaboration like this brief here is a collaboration between

Hype Hype Train Digital and us." So, Hyper Train kind of put this together. So, this is what a real artist brief looks like. Okay. So, you'll notice you just give the main idea. You just write this. See this text? I'm not going to read it to you. You could just read it right there. Okay. And so, they just said, uh, I think they said this is what it looked like originally. See, this is a non-art doing it. It's all text, all the same size, bold block level. And then you give a little background like what's your game like this? And then, this is an important thing. Quote other art that you like. You're like, these are the ones that you like. Oh, this is John's art, too. He also did the logo for Forge. I love this. again. Doesn't this just look like video games? That just looks like video games. And then you got Peglin. I don't think John did Peglin. I don't know. I don't know if he did. Um, and then, uh, so, uh, that's you say, I like these. This is the art I like. That's what you say. And then you say, here are some important elements. This is basically telling John like

these are things I want to put in here. Like, we like this. We like the 20-sided die. We like dice. Put some dice in there. So, again, this is what an artist brief looks like. It's kind of a one pager. You don't go too crazy. That's how it goes. Now, I don't quite do this. I do a little bit of a different spin. It's basically the same information, but I like to stretch them out. I like to stretch them out. So, let me show you. This is the ideal one. Let me show you my actual brief. I'm going to show you what mine looks like. I'm going to step through it. This is what I sent John. Okay? And then after this, at the end of this video, I sent it off to John. I said, "John, here's my brief. Here you go." and he took it. And in the next video, I'm going to show you what John did with it, his thumbnails that he comes back with. Hopefully, we're waiting on it. I'm going to see what he says. Okay, so let me walk you real quick through my brief. This is my artist brief. This is the start. This is literally what I sent John. Okay, so I I did this brief. I said, "Here's my class. It sucks. This web page sucks. Look at this. This sucks." Okay, I'm

going to make this better. So I again, I solved the pro I said the problem. This is equivalent to if you're doing a game, you say, "Here's my game. This is it. Here it is on H.IO or maybe a demo. Here's what here's what it is. I need art." Okay. So, here's I was given the background. This is the equivalent of the background where they said, "Oh, die in the dungeons like a rogike deck builder." This is what it is. I want to teach these four parts in my this is basically what my master class is about. It's four basic parts. Making a demo, working with the Steam algorithm, building a community on social media, launching the game. I what I want my here's my idea is I want a visual representation of those four things and the logo and all the art for my uh course page would have a metaphor of those four things together. That was my idea. That was me coming to that and then I present that to John and then John runs with that. Okay. And I again I don't I I like this art. This is uh Thomas Hart Benton. He was like a early 20th century American painter. He trained uh Jackson Pollock. you know, the guy that goes like this, I have an

art history degree. That's why I like like to quote this stuff. You don't have to quote Thomas Hard Benton or find your artist, but you might have art that you like. And so what I was telling him was like, I like how this composition is so crazy. Like there all these metaphors about what America's about, like planes and surving and welding. Uh and then they said draw and like hanging out in a in like a juke joint or something. I don't know. Being an old westerner. Anyway, so uh this painting just has this like mashing of what America is about into one painting. And I want a mashup just like this. Just this big chaotic mess that you just look at. It's just fun to look at this painting like, "Oh man, what I wonder what's going on here? What's this thing? What's going on here?" Um all that mashed together. I want the video game equivalent for the my site. Those four things that I told you are about the master class. I wanted that in picture metaphor. Okay, that's what all this text said. Okay. Um I also like this. There's this also American from

the 20s. I love this. This is a um hospital and they did a metaphor for what medicine's like and it's just like you're just grabbing death by the scythe and you're like back off death. I've got science and medicine and I'm buff as all hell. I love this metaphor. This is so cool. I wanted a visual metaphor kind of like that for my course. just like uh this is what it's like to beat back the Steam algorithm. Okay. Um and so uh but a reminder this is about games. You don't have to paint like Thomas Hart Benton and I here's what I always like to do in my briefs. I like to take the artist that I like because you should always pick the artist you like and I like John's art. So I just pick a piece that John did. I always Google the artist or go to their web page and look through their portfolio and find the artwork that I love the best and I love this painting and I explain why I love it. I always praise the artist. I'm like, I love this that you did. This is what we want to do. And then I have all these elements and then I explain

exactly what I like. Like I love this. I like how it just says game. And I sometimes I didn't do it here, but I like to point arrows like I love this guy. I love this tree with a house. I love this princess. You know, it's like just point an arrow and say, "This is what I like." Because if you just say, "I like this." He's gonna be like, "Well, what part? Do you like the colors? Do you like the shapes? Do you like the cartoony proportions? Do you like the arrangement, the layout? What do you like about it?" So, um, see, I um said what I like about it. I like that it just says game. Okay. I think I'd be a little bit And then I did a couple that are not his piece. Again, I like this crazy composition. And so I kind of this explanation explains what I like about this, you know, I go into it blah blah blah and then I reference some other things that I like other composition. See I like I'm trying to say this is the composition that I like where it's just chaotic and stuff like this. I'm trying to give him a bunch of input so that he can be like ah again I

know it's not AI but this is like training data. You're trying to throw all this training data of like this is the stuff that I like do more of this kind of stuff. Okay. And this game, this is a a cool little book series for kids, but it's still pretty good. I like this series. Um, and then I also said, "Oh, I like just the general vibe of this stuff." So, um, the other thing is like tools, you know, I like to to reference these tools. So, pot these tools in around there. Uh, this from Legend of Zelda thing. So, uh, I sum it up and I say, I like these visual metaphors and I love your game aesthetic. So, just mash those together. That's what I was trying to tell him. I'm just trying to give them that prompt. Okay. And so, I kind of brainstormed a couple ideas that I was kind of thinking. So, here's the four things that I'm talking about. And I was like, these are some metaphors like maybe making a demo as like a wizard doing some alchemy, that kind of stuff. Um,

that's what I'm doing. Um, so, uh, this is me just telling him, "Hey, can you do the text?" Okay, so that's it. That's my brief. It's it's simple, but the main thing that you're you're trying to do is say, "This is what I like, and here's some examples of what I like." You want the visual and the text. Don't just say, "Can you give me a capsule? Here's my game." You have to give them context of what you want. And then the final thing that you have to do is you have to back off because the artist is in charge. And this is one thing that I want to let you know is like you should like the artist that you're going with. And it's like it's like in relationships, you can't really change the person. You kind of are along for the ride of who they are. Same thing with artists. Don't if you don't just pick an artist and think that you can bend them their way. Like I like John's art. I just like his style. So, it's like just do your style in this direction. And I don't want to be too dididactic like I want a pink wizard

with purple hair and it has to look like this and can you make it look like this? You're just saying like this is the area where I am. Head in that direction and then I'm backing off and and John is going to take it that way. So, I sent John this thing and what I do is this is a Google spreadsheet or Google Sheets like a presentation and then I just create a link and I just send him a link and it's a slide by slide. This I'm literally going slide by slide for the thing that I sent John and I said, "John, here it is. Take a look." And he said, "Okay, I got some ideas. I'll get back to you with some thumbnails." And so, I'm waiting at this point. I sent it off to John and he is working on it. All right, virtual Chris here. Just checking in. May 21st is when I signed the contract, sent that payment to John. And then I took that briefing I just walked you through and I just emailed it to him. And then sure enough, just like clockwork, 2 days later, John had drawn

three sketches, three thumbnails, sent them my way. So what I did was I called him up and we had a virtual call. Let's watch that right now. I am here with the artist John. John, do you want to introduce yourself? Tell you who you are, what what kind of games you've worked on because you've got your own. And what kind of capsules you've worked on?
Oh, hey. I'm John John Nielsen. I've been an artist for many, many years. I somehow became the steam capsule artist guy. I don't know what's going on. I don't know where they keep finding me, but people keep paying me to draw the capsule arts. I've done like a hundred of these at this point. Uh the big ones, let's see, Die in the Dungeon, that was a recent big one. Rusty's Retirement, that's another big one. These are my greatest hits. Uh Forager, a lot of people have seen the Forager capsule art. And um that's not even my main

thing. I also uh work on my own games. Uh, I made witch hand and I'm working on my fourth game now. I'm very busy.
I so so much so talented. Like John, you're just a very talented guy. I I didn't know you did the rusties. I didn't know you did rusties. That's a good one.
That's cool.
So, you sent me your slide deck. I love getting a slide deck. Lots of good information. And you had the main bullet points that you wanted to hit.
So, and and and you sent me some references for the vibes, how you wanted it to look. Uh, so that was a great starting point that I used to throw out some layout thumbnails. So these are intentionally like quick. They're just to get the ideas out. We're trying to figure out the composition.
Yeah, let's look at them. And and what I like about them is I'm able to see um they're like three very different um layouts, three very different directions. And so I I don't what I like

about you and I don't know of all artists, but sometimes you get three and they're like very similar and I'm like well, you know, I like how explored you went with these. So let's let's take a look. So I'm going to look. He sent A, B, and C. I just blew these up full screen. So these are like thumb what they call them thumbnails in the art world, right?
Or postage stamps. Okay, that's pretty small. I mean, but I blew it up so it looks rougher than it is. But um so we've kind of got this island theme. And remember what I'm trying to do is cram everything that's in the course into like one image. And this is going to be a big one. So there's a lot going on. So then I'm going to go to B here. So we've got uh this one's B. I'm going to step off camera so that doesn't see. And then I'll go with C. Um okay. And that's C right there. All right. Good. Okay. So um totally dig it. Like I I I'm really happy the directions you went and like you really nailed the the basic all over because one of the things one of the the core looks that I

was trying to do was this like jumbled collage of all this stuff happening but it's like compressed in a thing and I really think C is the strongest. Like I really love what you did. Like I love how close the the gnome is right up front. Like he's nice and big and like you see that sense of scale like it it has that depth and everything's like packed in and overlapping with each other. I love how you did that. I think that is so cool. Um, so yeah, and that's like I think C is my favorite. I don't want to just go straight in there, but I do think C is my favorite of these. Um, here, hang on. Let me let me just make this a little bigger here so I can see. Um, I think C is my favorite. Um, I I like B next. I because I like this one also has um very tight composition. Like I like how overlapping they are all but the the C just had such an energy to it. It just felt like everything was happening on top of each other whereas everything here is very cordoned off. Not that but um is very cordoned off. C. And then um a I like a that the the

angle and everything but I just think um there's so much negative space with this like the water. It just it kind of makes it more static feeling. I that's why I just love C. I just feel like I love that energy, how frantic it feels on C. Yeah. And that's and that's why I'm I'm mo mainly focusing from my my standpoint. And tell me if I'm I'm I'm going wrong, John. I'm I'm mostly looking at the layout. And the things that I like are the overlapping. Like I like how this guy's head's kind of like kind of piercing here. This guy is overlapping with the witch. Like that's what I picked up on is the composition. Like how everything's laid out. Um, I'm not going to critique, hey, John, this eye is a little crooked. I don't like that. Don't critique that kind of stuff. Let's now I'm going to just do like a content side of things. Like, I really like um the layout that you have, but let's talk a little bit about um what you're talking about um as far as because one of the core things that I

want to do is there's basically four parts to my course um that I'm trying to visually represent. So, let me switch over to that uh those pages on here. Let's just go back and and kind of line them up based on on this because I think these are all good, but there were a couple that I liked in your previous thumbnails like a out of A and B that I was hoping that maybe we could slam them into C a little bit. So, let me let me go back. I'm just going to go back through the presentation here. So um so these were the four uh basic areas I wanted to cover like working with the Steam algorithm, making a demo, launching the game, building a community, talking about the game on social media. Okay, so the one I liked which I didn't expect uh was like, oh man, I love so building a community kind of talking about your game on social media is that broadcast. I really like the airplane flying over the village and you had that on the other one. And the reason I like it is, see, I kind of want this image to kind of represent all

games. And I could see that airplane being almost like a schmup. I kind of felt like um it brings in the airplane aspect of video games. Like I don't want this to feel entirely like it's all an RPG. I want it to feel like oh yeah, there you could see some elements of like a schmup or something. So maybe if you uh bring in like bring in that airplane into the composition over like people in the the little village. I love that. Um maybe bring that in and maybe do something kind of you know sometimes when it's like a goblin or like there there's many ways that airplanes are represented in video games. It's either the schmup where it's kind of like uh like very mechanical futuristic which I don't I don't know maybe but or it's like goblin steampunk kind of weird contraption airplane and you're flying over a village with a banner behind it. I don't know. Those are just some thoughts. I mean any let's see I was thinking maybe um I interpreted the gnome as um this

gnome with the thing that was kind of what I think is community building, you know, right? Um, I love the treasure diving. I love the the this guy. I love this one. So, is there a way we could bring that guy instead of um the gnome doing showing the thing with a price tag? That could be the the the treasure chest guy. And then uh the community management. See, here's the thing is I almost think she's building the game, you know, like the witch, like the alchemy of making a game. I love that metaphor. And so maybe we just bring the witch. I mean, you you work on the composition, but instead of the the guy building the the the computer right here, maybe it's the witch making the game. You making the demo, that sort of thing. So, we would get rid of this element where he's like literally building a computer in and in in place is the witch. So, making the demo, selling the game would be the

treasure chest guy, and he would be down here. And then we've got the airplane for building a community like broadcasting it. And maybe you have space somewhere in there. And then the fourth one I almost hit um was uh building a community is the airplane. Making a demo is the witch. Launching the game is the treasure chest guy. Opening the treasure chest. And then the other one working with the steam algorithm. Um let's see. What did you do with Ste? There was another one that you had with working with the steam algorithm that I really thought I I love this guy. This guy is so This is like so evocative like tall grass guy and things because it could also be the road map because that's a big part of what I'm adding for this new course version is I'm showing road maps of like here's what you need to do first then second and really emphasizing that and I'm doing some custom road maps where it's like I will tell you based on your genre even some genres have slightly different road maps depending on what type of game you're making. So I really

want to emphasize the road map thing. So, I love this guy. And there's a great metaphor. I even love this little guy peeking out. So, yeah. I I think I what I really like is I think I I actually like the elements of this one the most. You know, I think all these parts are good,
but I like the layout of this one much better. Um, okay. So, just to recap the elements. So I think it would be witch is making the demo. Airplane is showing the community. Treasure chest guy is launching the game. And then uh and then um oh Lost with a map guy. Lost with a map guy um is is the road map stuff. I think that should be it. So that's the four. Um and then um I a couple elements I really want to make sure you keep because I love it so much. I love the tall grass. I think that just looks so so cool. He's like waist deep in the grass. So, and the map like this guy's

perfect. I love this guy. The other thing that I like is I love your dwarf kind of guy. Can we make him fly in the airplane? Like I just like the look of him. Can we make him like flying the airplane or something like that?
Maybe some missiles. You know how like I love I love good spiraling missiles. Like the the the plane is going to broadcast but it's also going to shoot somebody else down. Um, but very dwarven, very steampunk, very like
um, witch. She's good. I am a little worried with witch hand because you you've got a great I love your witch on witch hand. I just want to make sure that I don't want to like I mean it could be a cool Easter egg. I just don't want to I don't want to feel like I'm pulling your character in. I want to make sure that we're separate. That's that's my only fear with the witch.
U, but I love her. I think she's cool. Um, no. And I like even though we're gonna get rid of this guy, I love the little gnome because I I just I don't know. It's It's just there's always like

so much lore behind like a gnome or something. I I just love that's the one thing I really want to make sure that when you do add these characters in, you kind of leave those open loops that you've you're so good at, which is like, oh my god, what what what what's the story behind him? Um, I think that's I think that's it. Um, yeah, let's go for it. Couple other things that I real minor things that I see like feel free to have more overlap. Again, I know this is just a sketch, but I I just love when it's like on top. I really like this part where it's like
layers.
I like the layers where it's like maybe something's covering up something else. I love that. So, I just want it to feel like so packed in like um I think one of my references that I showed you was this Thomas Hart Benton. He's a really cool artist that I like. I just love how like it just seems like everything's just like on top of each other. They're just like, you know, like and and the scale doesn't matter at all, you know? It's

like there's airplanes here and this guy's huge. Yeah. Like I I want it to be chaotic. I want it to be a little bit chaotic. So, so I just want you to And I also want you unleashed. Like just just if you're like, "This is kind of weird. I don't know if Chris is gonna I will I will like it." So, go crazy. Okay. Well, um, John, I just got to say like these are amazing. I love them. I love all three, but, uh, you did fantastic. I'm I'm really I'm really happy with what you did. All right. I'm just going to stop right here and I'm going to do a quick debrief. I I kicked John off the call. I just want to give you a little background behind what I'm thinking here. Here's one thing that you need to do when you're working with your artist is be kind and constructive with them. Don't say, "I like this. I don't." Always say I This is just personal. This is just how I do it. I don't know if this is the

the best way. I never say I don't like something. I may have maybe actually said something like that. But what I always try and phrase it as or or the way I'm steering the artist is I always say, "I like this better. I think this is so good." And I always praise and and they always say compliment sandwich like, "I love this. Maybe work on this and I love this." Compliment sandwich goes so far. You want to show that you like that artist and you're very happy to work with them because it is hard especially feedback-wise like you as a developer are going to be trying to steer them in a direction you know to make your vision that you've got a vision that you're trying to meet and you have to be cognizant that they're they're under a lot of pressure to kind of meet your expectations. So, it's a very stressful position for them. And so, you need to be very encouraging. Even though you're paying them

to do work for you, I always feel like I'm I'm serving them. I want to make sure that they're happy, they're excited. I don't want them because artists and and and and to get something creative down is so tenuous. It is so um it's like smoke. like it can be blown away real fast and or a little tiny flame that can snuffed out with a single puff. And so I want them to be excited to open up my project file and be like, "Yeah, great. Oh, Chris is going to love this." So I'm I I ladle on the praise. And so that's the way I do it. I I lead with carrots. Never say like, "God, this looks bad." Never ever ever say this looks bad. And they always told that to us in art critique. You say, "I think uh this is why I don't like this." Don't say this looks bad. You say why you don't like something, but you don't say I don't like this because I never tell an artist I don't like this. I've never I mean maybe one time I I don't know, maybe it slipped out or something. Um

but I always say, "Hey, I like this the best." Again, don't I don't like to criticize the artist that way. It's always, "Hey, oh, I think you could tone up this." And tell them why you don't like it. And don't say, "I don't like this because you just say, um, I think this part could be a little stronger. Like, I think there could be a little bit more detail here." or I think you could make this bigger. You don't say I don't like that. You just say how they could how they how they get out of the position where they're in that you don't like. So don't say I don't like this. Just say I think this could be more of this or I think this could be less of this. You see, you're you're giving solutions to them or or or what you're feeling and that's not criticizing them as an artist. You're criticizing the work itself. You're not saying, "Hey, I don't think you did that very well." See, you're crit if you say it that way. You're criticizing the artist. I always always talk about the work. Okay? I always talk about the work, not the artist. And so then we're I'm shoulder-to-shoulder with the artist. And together we're working towards that

goal. I never say, "Hey, I don't like what you did there." Mm- It's always ah, let's do this. I love so much about this. Those are just some very important things when you're doing this with an artist. Okay? And the reason, here's the other thing is I know he said most people don't like to do that. They do it through text. I don't like to do the art critique on text because stuff can be misinterpreted and there's very subtle like the tone of your voice matters. Like, oh, I'm so excited. Yeah, this looks so great. You know, that doesn't come across in text. And so, even if your artist, maybe your artist lives in a different time zone or something like that, maybe even record a video of you talking. You don't have to do the video live screen. Maybe you could just do it and you just see their mouse. Like just do it through OBS and just explain what you like. It's not a two-way where you have to bring them on a call because that could take time, you know, to do it. You could do it asynchronously where you do a live critique of their work through video and then you send them the video file. That could do you could do

that. Um, I just I like to tell it because you just it's such an emotional experience to to commission this art and to get an artist to see your vision. I like to explain it because they could totally misinterpret like, "Oh, man. I think they hated it. They had so many feedbacks, they must hate it." But if it's a tone-wise, you're like, "Yeah, this looks great. Oh, I love this and this." And then the feedback may be because you're excited and you have all these ideas and that's why you're giving all that feedback. But that doesn't come across if you just text them like, "Hey, these are the things I thought." They're going to automatically even if they're a happy artist, they're going to assume when they see that much feedback, they're like, "Oh god, they hated this." That's that's the way. So, um, that's that's my advice for how to critique an artist. Um, I don't know if that's the best. That's just how I do it. Keep it positive. Focus on the work. Give ideas. Be be specific. Choose a direction and go and just go with the process. Okay. The the thing that I love about an artist and

working with an artist is when they do something surprising that I didn't even conceive of. Kind of like that airplane pulling the banner flying over the village. I was like, that is so clever. I never thought about it that way. That wasn't in any of my briefings. He just did it. That's why I love to work with artists because they can do this stuff. They just come out with stuff. And so you just got to those kind of moments only happen if you're constructive. You feel like you're open to stuff and you let them know that you're ground your game for that. You're like, you don't have to do exactly what I'm saying. You can kind of go crazy because why would I pay all this money for an artist if I didn't want their vision? I'm not an artist. I don't I don't have that vision. They do. And so I want them to be like, "You're front and center. You're the You're the genius here." All right. Virtual Chris here back. It's June 2nd. I got the sketches back from John. Well, really, it was just one big one. It combined resorted. And uh one

thing to pay attention to right here, I try and let the artist introduce their work so I can see what to look at. Let's check it out. I keep this document. This is the nuts and bolts, folks. I keep the slideshow rolling. So if I go way back into the beginning of this, I had this is my uh shared document. We do a SL shared slideshow and it shows all the things that I like and this my comps and all those sort of things that I've sent John. I just keep a running thing. So John will text me. He'll he'll uh DM me his next version and I throw it in here just so it's on a central location. So here I put round two. So, this is what John sent me after I said go with C and kind of rework it and mix and match and you came with this awesome stuff. Um, now based on those two thumbnails that we just looked at, A and C, and we mixed in B, like you can see little B guy here. We
did.
Um, do you want to kind of like talk about what your thoughts were with this next version? So, this is we've thrown

away the other two thumbnails and we're focusing all on this one,
right?
John, anything that you want to kind of point out about this one before we dive in? So, this one's a little closer to what the final might look like. It's still rough. It's still a sketch, early sketch, but it's it's bigger, more detailed than just a rough thumbnail where the entire purpose is to get the composition. Now, now we're getting into the details. And I put in the uh things that you requested. You wanted to bring the thief man back. He's opening the chest. We got the lost dude in the woods and the airplane flying over the city telling everybody about your game.
Good. No, I mean it's it's it's looking so great. I love I love this composition. Um I love this guy. You I could see you put more detail in him and uh I I love what you you kept this little spooky guy. I don't know who he is, but I like
either
I don't know if you're it's like you just threw him in as a placeholder, but I did like that like David and the gnome guy that you had earlier in there.

I'd say I I like them. Keep them in there and keep gnome and mop, you know, like we kind of I'd never opted in for the gnome. I think it was selling your game was way back in a few thumbnails.
Um, let's see where it is. Where is he? I think he's under me. Uh, yeah, it's this guy. I love this guy. So, were were you imagining he's behind the tree?
No, I just I don't know. I just
I love him, though. I wish I could use him. So,
something to put there, I guess.
Yeah, let's let's put him behind the tree. Okay. Um,
no, I I I I think you're doing great on this one. One other uh thought that I I love the chest. It's looking good. My only thought is maybe move that key up just a little bit so that we can see the full lock because it kind of gets cut off.
Oh. And so I just think it's a major part of the action is like launching your game is like opening it up and maybe move some of that action up so that you see a little bit more of that lock and you see some of the gold in there maybe cuz I do like that I think you came up with a metaphor maybe it was

like launching games like opening a chest. You don't know how much gold is in there and it's kind of a metaphor I've picked up throughout this is like we really don't know even if you have wish list this is a kind of marketing thing. We really don't know when you launch your game if it's going to have gold in it. Like some games, they get a lot of wish list, but they just don't convert. And I love this metaphor that you've come up with where it's like a chest and we don't know how much gold's in there, what kind of loot. It could be just like a boot.
We don't know. So, put some just a little something in there, I guess.
Sure.
But,
um, now the the one thing that I really I love the witch, he's looking good. This guy. Um, and one thing and I was thinking with this uh this is road map. Uh, this is the metaphor is like because one of the new things I'm doing is showing everybody a road map in the new master class. And so he's basically following a little map of like how do I market my game and and get through this journey. So that's great. I did have a metaphor in one of my lectures about having a following is like having a canteen and you pour the canteen out.

And so if you could it would be kind of cool if you just put a little canteen on his belt. A little little canteen. It's just a little Easter egg for the other
for the other thing. So, that'd be pretty cool. Um, the one thing that I was looking at. Um, and I was thinking about this. I I woke up in the middle of the night and was thinking about this. I we talked about the airplane. I don't know. Even though I I love it. I'm thinking maybe I I was thinking back to one of our original kind of pitch things is like building a community is like a necromancer raising a dead army. I kind of it makes me laugh thinking about that that metaphor that relationship. Could we maybe swap out the airplane in the houses for somebody doing like raising a undead army? What do you think?
You want me to draw an army of skeletons?
That was the other thing is like there were no skeletons and John looking at chart you do the best skeletons. I love your skeletons. And so I was like
this doesn't have any skeletons. I'd love some skeletons.
All right. If that's the job, I'll do it. Okay. Um, and one thing I was

thinking is make sure I want to make sure it's clear, and this is where I turn it over to you. The one worry I have is I want to make sure that it's like the whoever the main character is in this little section.
Make sure it's clear that they are raising the skeletons and it's not like, oh, I'm I'm confronting an army of skeletons because I think the
the metaphor is like I am summoning this. So,
however you do that, you do your duty.
Um, but man, it's awesome. I and this is I love the little mushroom in here. I know this is like an early concept. I love this stuff because it's like this is why I like your artwork, John, is it's like there's these little things that have like a whole story. Like I wonder what would happen if I ate that, you know? There's all these little kind of like mini Easter eggs like why is she throwing a diamond in there? It's just like these little open loops that you leave that I love about your artwork. So keep it up. Keep that mushroom in there. I love it. Go for it. So, um, I did label the Let's see here. I did I like this. Anything you threw in

these, uh, I saw these at the bottom. What was your thought with these? What should I think about when you
Yeah, I included these with the the sketch cuz this is the other part of it is I actually do have to uh design these characters. So, I I put out some um some concepts for them. I gave the thief uh you mentioned keys, so I gave him a giant ring of keys, which I haven't figured out how to incorporate back into the actual image yet, but I'll figure it out. And I also need to nail down the design for the uh the witch. And I guess we're saying goodbye to the dwarf pilot, but
I know I love him, but um I just want to raise an undead army. I just think I love
I just want to have an army.
I love the way he's going and I love the bomb. You did a good job getting that bomb in there. It's just something about skeletons. I got to have skele. You got to have skeletons in any video game thing. So like, man, no skeletons. Let's bring them. Let's bring the skeletons. So, um, with a necromancer, however you want to do, like whatever you think. My

only thought is if it's a wizard, you know, he kind of look, although he's thiefy, I'm afraid if you have two wizardy looking guys, it could be
No. Yeah.
Interesting. But I totally trust you on like just making something cool necromancer looking guy. So, Um, but no, it's all looking great. Um, yeah, that's all I got.
Okay, cool.
Um, at this stage, now we can step back outside of me. When you're at this stage with other developers, like if you're working with some other developer,
Mhm.
who's trying to commission your kind of capsule, what do you like to hear at this stage? So, we're we've kind of we've kind of solidified on this. We're kind of we're kind of honing in on here. What do you like to hear from developers at this stage? What helps you get the job done and not endlessly spiral?
Well, what we just went through our most recent experience that was pretty good. I like um

receiving what's working about this one, what we want to tweak, and what's the how best to find to hit that final goal. So, it's like, okay, I like all these sections. Let's change out this section. Let's keep moving in this direction. And having the strong vision really helps. A lot of um a lot of clients can be, you know, a little wishy-washy. It's it's a hard decision to make because the decisions we make here will, you know, do I turn left or right at the end? What's it going to look like when all the decisions build up? And it can be decision paralysis. But when you get someone who is like, "No, this one, let's go this way." That makes my job a little bit easier. And that's always uh more fun, too.
Yeah. Yeah. That's great. And I I one mentality that I try and bring and I kind of mentioned a little earlier and I

hope developers working with an artist bring is I want to trust you, John. Like I hired you for the vision. I'm not trying to shoe you, horn you into a sty somebody else's style. Your style is what I want. And so I'm just kind of like, "This is looking good. You surprise me and I'll let you take it." So, um, developers, I think when John's saying be decisive, I'm like, "This is what this is all looking good. John, you take it." So, you have to I think from a developer commissioning a piece of art standpoint, just trust the process. Trust your artist. Let them go because they're going to come up with cool stuff.
Yeah. But you also do need to don't be afraid to say something if there's an important part that I missed. If you really wanted skeletons, you got to say so or the end result will not have skeletons.
It's like that can really
I want this guy to have a canteen. So it's like
and you can't be afraid to say so. Like I'm not going to take it personally that I got a note to add skeletons. I've been

at this
Everybody loves to add skeletons. though.
Yeah.
Okay. Um, one thing I didn't think that we haven't really covered which I sometimes I don't think developers especially if they have a very heavy code background, no art background,
the importance of pallet. Um, now I I like in general all your stuff uh like your palette is very pink, very purple. It's very cool, very cool colors. Like literally cool cool colors. Um, how and I I the reason I bring up it sometimes I don't think developers I joke I'm not serious. I feel like they think in black and white like they don't I've seen some color choices from programmer art and I'm like do you know what colors look like? Cuz that color combination that you came up with and that's so
even though it's like yes a witch is going to make a purple potion. There's lots of different types of purple and the way it mixes together. Sure.
How should we have the color decision uh discussion, John? Um, I haven't thought about colors yet

because what I'm going to do is once we sort of more or less nail down to the um the composition, the idea, I'll probably do a few color tests.
Okay.
And looking at it now, it does make sense. It's like yellow here, purple there. But I don't know if we want like four quadrants of just like red, blue, yellow. I It's a It's a unique picture. I don't draw these sort of collages very often.
Okay.
Um so making it cohesive will be a fun challenge. But that's why I'm going to do probably multiple different color tests where I'll just do real quick like brush stroke, brush stroke, brush stroke. How do we feel about this? So, what you do?
Okay, I got you. Yeah. One thing that I'm thinking and and just to kind of push you in a direction, I kind of see this course as a pro tool. You know how

it's like if you download ProTool software, it's always dark black. You know, it's like black and the texture, the background's black and it's kind of like purpley dark mode as a lot of people like
clean software aesthetic.
Yeah. And so, I see this course as a premium pro tool. And so if I could say I love your your color palette. I love the purples that you always use, the light cooler colors, but really keep it a dark palette if you can't like darken it so that everything and and then it could kind of do some things where it it would really pop like him opening the chest really
contrast with the darker palette overall her being, you know, brewing something in the dark type of mystery. So, um, if I could say like you you're in charge of the palette, but kind of lean towards darker pro tools theming where everything's dark
pastels. I'm okay with pastels because sometimes a pastel on a dark background. Okay. I I think kind of I don't have a easy handle

on it, but I think your which
I hear what you're saying.
Your witch hand. Let's Let's pull it up. Let me Let me look it up. Let me see if I can do this without the camera at my wall. Let let me pull up which hand here. I when I saw it, I'm kind of thinking witch hand because this is and if you didn't know folks, this is John's game. Witch hand.
I think a lot of your stuff kind of has this darker I was kind of thinking of this. See, this is what I'm thinking of is like darker ProTools mode, you know? You kind of got this dark forest.
Everything's dark,
you know, but you've got these great pops here. So, this
colorful.
It's colorful. It's It's John style. like I hired you for this palette, John.
Okay.
I love the way this looks.
Um I'm just thinking, you know, when I compare that to one of your other games, um this one is much darker. It has that darker palette like this. This is kind of what I'm thinking is more like kind of in this vibe. Does that make sense?
Yeah. To No, totally. Yeah.

Because it's still it's still a John pastel. I mean, you got the pinks and the purples and these greens. This is John style, but it's
it's it's a little it's a little darker.
So, all right. Well, John, I am I'm totally jazzed about this. I think you're doing great. I I um I don't know. I just like everything you do. So, I appreciate you.
Thanks.
All right. Well, um we'll call it here. I don't want to take too much of your time. I think you I think we kind of settle on what you want to work on. Uh what you need to go to the next days. Um what do we do next? What what's the timing? How how do you work from here on out? What what what'll I see next from you?
So, I'll get back to you here soonish with the uh next st uh next sketch. I'll probably size it up again, uh, refine it, uh, get in the skeletons, get approval on the skeletons, and, uh, really get it locked in before I do I'll

do some color tests, and then I'll get the act to work on the actual production of the final art, where I'll do the line art first, and then I'll check in a couple times, and then after that, I'll get colors, and we'll uh, check in a couple times between now and And but yeah, next very next step, another sketch.
Great, John. Love it. Great work. I'll talk to you soon. And I'm This is what I'm looking forward to of all the things. I've got a trip coming up. I'm looking forward to this more than the trip. Just to put you on there. I love I love what you're doing. So, thank you so much.
I'll try to live up to the hype.
I'll talk to you later, John. Great to talk to you.
All right. It's June 5th. I stopped bringing John on calls because I didn't want to waste his time. So, what I did was a one-sided recording just myself and then I sent John this recording. So, check it out. [Music]

Hey, John. Okay, let me switch over here. John, this is looking great. I really like it. Um, good job. You included all the feedback that I gave. I truly appreciate I'm just going to flip over here. So, um, yeah, I looked at it. Okay, so here's here's the feedback. Um, uh, again, I love the details here. I love his maps looking good. Chest, you got the anchor in there. Very good. So good, John. Okay. Uh, one thing that I uh, so I saw the new necromancer. I like it. Um, but I just want to make sure the tone is right. And so one thing I always tell developers is like, you are not, don't worry, marketing is not making you the center of attention. And I feel like I feel as if this is um saying you're going to be center stage with the spotlight and developers are gonna going to freak out. So what here's what I was thinking is um not so much I want it to be more like they're summoning the army. And so the other thing is I don't want them to have the joyous face. Um I

really liked in the previous versions the guy that was flying the airplane uh you had that I don't know if he was a dwarf or something but he had that helmet. Um, you know, you couldn't really see his face. And, uh, maybe here's kind of what I'm thinking is I love the body. The body and the costumeuming is great. No change. No recommended there. Maybe just slap a a dark helmet where you can't even see the person's face, so you didn't see the emotion. So there's a dark I kind of want to be slightly dark and s sinister about like yes I'm summoning my army because that's what in one of my lectures I tell devs like uh s treat marketing like you're summoning an army to go march against steam and so it's it's not so much like a joyous thing like this which is accurately representing joy and it looks fun but the the the kind of emotion that I want is more of a like a sinister and so um I'm not saying you make a sinister face. I just kind of like the thing. And I'll flip over. I added the the following slide. I kind of showed kind of Well, I'll do it right now. So, here's the uh

the thing. One thing that kind of reminded me of you did this guy. I love this guy. This guy looks so cool. It kind of reminded me of the death dealer guy from classic thing. And I kind of see see how you can't see his face. You just kind of see an eyes. I It kind of reminded me this guy right here. So, if you could just kind of take whatever you're going with his head, you don't have to turn them into dwarf. So again, like I like his this person's body. It's just I was thinking kind of like a darker head. I kind of like this guy's Can we just take his head? Some sort of form of that head on this person. And again, maybe not like, hey, I'm the most important person here. More like rise as kind of the the body motion there. Um, and then with the skeletons, um, I I kind this is funny. I like this joke. This is a good joke. I kind of want them to be more like sinister skeletons like, "Yes, my lord." I don't want them to be like, "Yay!" I don't want them to to cheer. I want the it to be kind of a darker tone a little bit. Not like totally dark because your your art is

very cartoonish in a beautiful way. Uh I just want them to be a little bit more sinister. So maybe have some of them have I mean one of those skeletons has to have a bow and arrow. So maybe like one of them holding a bow and arrow. I mean a skeleton without a bow and arrow. What are you going to do? Your skeletons are great. I love you do great skeletons. I just want like a couple with spears. Nobody cheering. It's more like they're marching like a skeleton army. They're marching off. They don't they don't even care about me as much. The uh the person necromancing, they're just kind of like, "Yes, my lord." And they're just like shambling on. So, I just don't want it to be like I just don't want the dev to feel like they're the center of attention because there's one thing devs don't like. It's being the center of attention. Um but um again, the costumeuming is good. just new head slightly in in still your pastel way slightly sinister skeletons and they're more about them marching towards steam than something else. Um and then the the new guy. I love it.

Looking good. You got the canteen in there. That's beautiful. Like it reads like a canteen. Good job. U forest is looking good. Love this. Is this a grapple hook? I love it. I didn't even ask for that. I mean, I did say tools, but if this is a grapple hook, I love grapple hooks. And you did it. So awesome. Don't change it. Love that. Uh, the one thing is the face. And this is also kind of a tone thing that I try and strike with my stuff. If you interpret it, his facial expression looks like he's confused. And here's the thing is like he's using theoretically he's using a road map that I created. I don't want him to be confused when he's looking at my road map. I want him to feel like there's a lot here and I got to think about it. So, I was thinking maybe his facial expression is more like a, you know, like when little kids are drawing and they stick out their tongue when they're drawing. So, more of a I'm thinking very hard facial expression. Kind of like a like that kind of facial expression like he's looking at it like I like I see it. I just have to think about how I'm going to use this. Not like because his facial

expression here, which is fine, but and it's good, but it's kind of like what the hell is this? And I don't want people looking at my course and go, "What the hell is this?" I want them to be like, "Yeah, there's a lot here. I just got to think on this." That's kind of my thought. And he's kind of looking at the camera like, "What is this crap?" Uh, which is fine. I mean, I could see that, but I mean, when I look at a map, I'm like, "What the hell is this?" But I think what the the kind of uh emotion that I'd like to do is more like a Yeah. Yeah. This kind of makes sense. I think I could get this to work. I think I know I think I know what I can do. And then they're kind of like just processing. So, more of a a processing face if I could. Um, slight thing. I love I love the chest. You got the gold and the anchor. Good. A couple things with the chest. Uh, the chest guy with a new hand. I was kind of thinking like he's more like you know how like cartoons they kind of twiddle their fingers before they reach in there. We just did a little little one or two fingers just kind of like like I don't even know how you draw this, but I was just kind of thinking just a little bit more grabby thing. And um so there's

this joke that I always do. So, I was thinking uh the the key there would be one key in the chest. Like I love the chest, but maybe just like one key sticking out of the keyhole and has the letter V on the key. Like it's a kind of a bit more ornate key. Remember how like in Zelda the the the master key had like a skull or no, it was like a lion head on it for some reason? The very original Legend of Zelda? I was thinking something kind of like that but has a big V on it because I always there's this little joke that I do with the comedic and anytime somebody does a lore dump I say, "Oh, you're talking about the seven keys of Amtusler." And so this kind of an Easter egg joke where the key will actually say V. And if somebody's really watched a lot of my videos, they'll be like, "I bet that's one of the keys of Amtler." So just make sure that that's one of the keys sticking out with a V. I think this ring is fine. Just I don't know how many you have. So maybe make sure that there's six keys on the ring and the one key with a big V on it to be like V vampus and so the the true fans will get it. So that's a secret um thing. But um I think that's

it. I think that's it. So yeah, which is great. She's doing fantastic. I love She's kind of got the thinky face. She's got a good thinky face. Um love the cat. Dropped in a cat. Love it. I love it. Good job. Um, uh, I think that's it. So, yeah. Um, what I did was I summed it up here. Uh, Vampusler key, the V key in the in the slot. Uh, slightly twiddly fingers, thinking hard face, maybe holding swords, and a bow. There needs to be at least one sk every skeleton. There's always got to be one that holds a bow. Um, some sort of like the horn guy, maybe his just horn head as this guy. And then, uh, a little bit more sinister with the skeletons. Not so happy. Not like they're cheering on. Everything else, you're doing great, John. Can't wait to see the color. Go for it. Everything else is looking fantastic. You dropped in like a secret grapple hook. I love it. So awesome. Just I couldn't be happier. So, all right. Thank you so much, John. I'll see

you around. Looking forward. [Music] All right. So, that's what I sent to John. Now, I'm going to I'm going to do a little secret conversation here with you, Mr. YouTube viewer. Let's take a look. This is what uh I have and what my thoughts are that I don't want to share with John. So, don't tell him I told you this. At this point, John has told me several times like, John, what do you like about what don't you like when you work with developers? And he's like, Decisiveness. Now I have to be careful because there are things that are locked in and we are constantly marching towards the finish line. And this is where we cannot shift priority and go fix something else. Um I this is just personally this is how I treat it is if I said something was good looking good, I'm happy with it. It's not going to change. I'm not going to say you know what I think we should go back to the airplane. That ship has sailed. That airship has sailed. We're

going with necromancers. Okay. I'm not going to keep going back and forth with him because that's when the relationship with the artists start to fray. Okay, I made that decision. I'm a bold decision maker and I decid decided that we're going to go with the necro. My answer right up here, summoning your army. Okay, now one thing I recommend you do, I say add it, give it back. I at least sleep on it. So, I have given I've been looking at this for 24 hours. I slept on it. You will have some ideas. That's where I got the thinking hard face. So, I get it back fast, but I still think about it. I sleep on it just so I can let my subconscious do it. Work on it. Don't I don't immediately respond except maybe at the very very end. We might do like Good, looks good, good, good. Okay, so just sleep on it. All right, things at this point move very fast. And we didn't even do any calls. I didn't even do any recordings. So, it's June 6th. John just sends me a quick image in Discord. Just sends me a quick message. Here's what it looks like. Look at that. And then I just say, "Looks good. Nothing more needed. It's time to move

on to colors." All right. John takes a few days, about four. It's June 10th. He sends me another Discord message with some colors. Now, these are just splashes of color. He just kind of fills out the background. And guess what? I'm happy. I don't have much to feedback. I think he did a great job. So, I just say, "Looks good. Keep moving. [Music] All right, 3 days later, lucky June 13th. John sends me final colors. Who am I to argue what color a witch is supposed to be? Looks good on my side. So, I said it looks good. Then I started looking a little closer and noticed background looked a little little too masculine, little too excited back there. kind of reminded me of reminded me of the old VHS cover, The Little Mermaid. So, I told John, "Hey, I don't want to distract from your awesome

artwork. Let's see what we can do." John said, "No problem." And just hid that layer. So, that's all we had to do. And uh we got a beautiful piece of artwork John and I made, mostly John. So, I said, "Looks good. Ship it." That's all I did. And here we are. I got a beautiful piece of artwork. Jonath got a couple more nickels in his pocket. He had another day. Good luck with your artwork. Hope everything can go well. Hope you get a good artist. Keep going around. We'll get there one day. What I want you to do is go check out how tomarketaggame.com/courses. You get to see how that artwork played out. The actual pages. Go on, check it out. Might have a sale one day like right now. [Music]