Nyaakuza Cover Art
This is the final cover for the student game I worked on titled "Nyaa-kuza." The color composition and lighting style was inspired by our logo (designed by Dylan Young). This cover took a very long time to finish because I wanted to capture the vibe of our game while staying true to the composition style of the original cover I did back in December 2020. In this project I've included the original cover, which is just a colored lineart, and the thumbnails leading up to that cover as well. This new cover turned out to be a very interesting, contrasting piece of art. I'm happy with how it looks compared to the original cover, which is hard to read and boring. My hope is for this cover to be a fun representation of our game along with capturing the attention of the player.
Finished piece. Utilized many "multiply" and "vivid light" layers to achieve this look. Lengthy, but worthwhile process. I learned a lot about how to properly use "vivid light" layers.
Colored lineart with local color. At this point, I was stuck and unsure of how to achieve the look I wanted. It took me many different tries to find the direction I wanted. Very frustrating point in this piece, but a necessary step in the process.
Finished lineart of this piece. I was very happy and excited at this point of the drawing because the lineart looked very promising.
Rough sketch of the piece. I did a lot of compositional problem solving in this stage.
The original finished cover. Biggest critique I received on this piece was the upside down characters at the bottom of the piece because they were hard to read. In all honesty, that can be said about the whole piece.
Another version of the OG cover, but in square format and entirely black background for more contrast.
The thumbnails I did while deciding which direction to take for the cover.