Issue #12 - Steam Art Process

Hey there! As you may have gleaned, the past month or so had been a tough one for me and my motivation with the game. But I did have a major motivational boost in the form of starting the Steam-prepping process. For those who may not know, Steam is THE major storefront for digital computer games. There is a whole strategy to releasing a Coming Soon page for your game in order to get people to put it on their Wishlist. The more Wishlists a game has, the more likely Steam will feature the game on the front page, leading to more Wishlists in a vicious cycle. When the game is released, anyone who has Wishlisted the game gets a direct email notification, providing one of the biggest marketing pushes your launch can receive.

My first step in creating a Steam page was to commission the store artwork. I could have created it myself, but this art is the first thing people will see for your game. It should be enticing and professional to get people to learn more. I wasn't going to rely on my own skills for something so important. I needed a professional. In this issue, I'll go through that process of finding and hiring an artist and the many iterations we went through before getting the final product.

Setting the Tone

The first thing when starting my artist search was to determine what tone and style I wish to convey. This is going to be almost everyone's first impressions of the game, and it needs to say so many things at once: the wholesome themes, the time travel aspect, the toy-centric world, all while featuring Barty as the main character. I started my search by looking at other pixel art indie games featuring a character as the main focal point of the art.

Eventually I got closer and closer to the themes I was looking for, finally finding it in the Forager key art:

This led me to its artist, Jon Nielsen -

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Rn1gmy

Jon had some limited availability, but was willing to get the art done before my planned Steam page release at the end of September. The other consideration I was weighing was price. I had no idea how expensive this would be, but I figured Jon's services may be out of my budget given the level of quality games he had worked with in the past. I contacted another artist just in case it didn't work out with Jon, but it turns out that Jon's fee was more than reasonable and we signed a contract within a day.

Iteration Process

Not knowing exactly what I wanted, but having a rough idea of pixel adventure games I've seen in the past, I sent some reference videos and screenshots to Jon. This included images of Stuffies Town, the loop back cutscenes, and various NPCs in the world. I also sent Jon the itch.io link to the latest build (found here!) so that he could explore more if he wanted to.

Within a week, Jon replied back with the basic concepts:

I'm going to be honest: just seeing another artist's take on Barty had my heart pounding. This was amazing and such a motivational boost. I mean... there he is! With a bunch of characters I came up with! Kind of surreal.

But that said, I had a couple of comments that I hoped Jon would tweak. I asked if he could do bubbles instead of stars as a focus, an action-focused pose for Barty (since he is the one controlling the timeloop rather than the other way around), and possibly a background that insinuates exploration.

With those notes in mind, Jon provided some updates:

We were getting close, and seeing the multiple perspectives helped a bunch with me forming exactly the idea I wanted to see. The adventure-focused background was admittedly too busy (although Jon tried to make it work!), but the blank background of B was too sparse. So we moved forward with the arrangement of B with the A swirl background. I couldn't decide between which pose I like more (B or C), so Jon just did both!

After polling some friends, it was clear the first one was the way to go. Jon did a few more refinements and finalized, all within a week.

Logo-a-Gogo

Next up was the logo. I loved the idea of the bubble being incorporated in it, with the font being some sort of kid-handwriting style. But the readability had to be a priority, especially given that the image would be much smaller on the Steam homepage. Jon of course had this covered and then some, sending over five options:

I LOVED both 1 and 2, with 2 being my favorite. I asked Jon if he thought #2 would be legible over the art, and he went above and beyond again, providing multiple options:

2B was another clear winner, and after some last minute tweaks, we had our finished capsule art:

Recap

Not only was this a seamless process, but it was completed quickly and in a super professional manner. Jon is the real deal, and it was an absolute delight working with him. And who can argue against this work! I mean, check out some of these pieces!

I would wholeheartedly recommend Jon for any devs who may be reading this. This process has breathed some new life into me after some tough months mentally. I know at the very least that the Steam Art is fantastic, and I'm more determined than ever to make the rest of the game match this quality.

Next up is a trailer for the game and getting a draft store page ready. I'm hoping to have the trailer done by the time the next newsletter goes out, so keep an eye out for that. In the meantime, thanks for all of the support!

Thanks! 😄

This newsletter is an update series for the development of the game Barty's Adventure. If you are interested in continuing the conversation, please join the community Discord server: https://discord.gg/M7p2Mtgkyx. Your input in these early stages of the game are invaluable and much appreciated. Thanks!