Creating Catalog Assets for “The Botanist”

I wasn’t anticipating while making my game that I would need high resolution color assets to advertise my game in Catalog.

I found it surprisingly difficult to get something I was happy with. I spent a long time sketching out different ideas for layouts – trying to figure out what exactly to show and how to compose it outside the confines of a comic panel.

Sketches

I finally arrived at the image of the botanist being eaten by the piranha plant. That’s something that doesn’t actually happen in the comic, but I like the imagery and I like that it alludes to other adventures he might have had.

The Botanist feature image

I liked this drawing a lot, but found it didn’t really sit well next to the pixel-art versions of my promotional images, which were all derived from my game’s menu screen. I ended up redesigning all the pixel-art assets to match the new color image.

Menu images

I find the new image much more dynamic and intriguing so I’m glad I took to the time to make the change.

For my next project, I’m planning to keep these high-res color images in mind from the start.