BoardGameGeek Artist Series!

In this month’s geek store update thread where they announced having promos for Unfair, they also announced something utterly amazing: the BoardGameGeek Artist Series!  Every Monday in August, BGG will be revealing a new poster from some of our industry’s best artists who have put their own take on one of their favorite games.  By random happenstance, Blood Rage is the first poster revealed, and it looks amazing.  Vincent Dutrait did a truly amazing job.

Here are more details:

Announcing the BoardGameGeek Artist Series!

I’ve always been a big fan of the great artists in our industry, and firmly believe they’re often just as important for sales of a game as the designer. That box cover is the first impression someone gets of the game, and getting the look and feel of a game right is monumental!

I’m also a fan of art in general, frequenting art shows and fairs for quality artwork for our home. However, there’s one room in my house that I wish I had more great art for: my game room. Sure, there are options out there, but I often find them kind of tacky, and not the high-quality variety I’d like to put on display.

I finally got the inspiration I needed when I came across this series of NASA illustrations online. I loved the look of many of these, and thought it would be super cool to have art prints of a similar quality for board games. So, I figured I’d do something about that.

So, I went about emailing many of my favorite artists in the industry, which took quite some time, as we have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to super talented artists in our industry! To my delight, many of them responded, eager to get on board! Furthermore, we have many great publishers in this industry who said “Yeah! Go for it!” when I asked if they’d be cool with us making art work based on their properties. The board game industry is a truly great and friendly place.

My request to the artists was:

Pick one of your favorite games in the BGG top-100-ish, but one you were not the original artist for.
Create an original work of art for that game in the style of a 1950’s travel poster.
Have fun!

Due to the work of several amazing artists, I now have four works of art, which is enough to complete Series 1 of the BoardGameGeek Artist Series of art prints! Provided folks are interested in these, we also have more artists lined up for future series!

Some details on the art prints

The prints will be 12″x 18″.
They will be giclée prints, printed on Somerset Velvet – 310 gsm, certified archival paper. This printing method means the ink is integral to the paper rather than just printed on the surface, so the surface stays matte rather than glossy, fitting with the 1950’s travel poster look. The paper also has a bit of a rough surface texture with almost a velvety feel to it. I have some sample prints of the posters, and the color is very vivid; far better than what the artwork looks on a computer screen!
The price will be $30 each, or $100 for the entire series of four prints. This is subject to slight tweaking, but will likely be the final price.
The prints will go up for preorder in our September store update, with the preorder period lasting one month. We will print more than are preordered, but this will be the main way to guarantee yourself the prints.