Luschek Illustration Blog: December 2014

Friday, December 19, 2014

KickStarting a Victory


Victory in Europe, Box Cover,oil on paper, Copyright © 2014, Columbia Games, Inc. and Richard Luschek

The new Columbia Games block game is coming out soon. After two years work and a very successful KickStarter run the game is finally at the printers. Having completed the art for almost 60 card and game pieces, the final thing was to paint a cover. It was originally going to be a weary solder after a battle. I had sketched a few out, one idea being a soldier after the D-Day invasion.

Instead Columbia wanted to go with a portrait of Churchill. The game had gone though multiple name changes through its development- Guts and Glory, K.I.S.S and finally Victory in Europe. As Churchill was famous for his V for Victory sign, I thought it would be cool to incorporate his fingers into the title of the game. Of course there are a lot of great photos of Churchill to reference. I used a few different photos to do the final drawing and then did inked up a final image.

I printed this out on 11x14 paper and coated the paper with amber shellack. I mounted it on a board and then did the painting in oil.
I wanted it to have a strong graphic, postery look, so I left the strong lines and occasionally had to paint them back to make a strong image. I wanted the image to look like a painting, so I used a lot of thick paint and loose application on most of the image. Of course there are not a lot of color images of Churchill so I used both a mirror and other portraits to get the colors I wanted.

The game will be shipped in a plan black box with a sleeve to fit over it. Taking cues from the the design I did for the back of the cards I thought the game box should look like a war machine with bolts and rivets.

Here is the final layout of the box showing the back and sides of the box. This also shows a few of the cards I did, many based on old photos and posters from the time, laid out on the back of the box.