Fun with label contests

Label Artwork

Entry posted by Nathan Strum February 8, 2010

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Here's why I like label contests...

They allow me to just do whatever I want, and not worry about someone else liking it or not.

Now that's not to say I don't want the programmer to like it, or that I don't get to do what I want with labels-for-hire. Quite the contrary. Of course I'd like to win the contest, and as for the other, I'm generally given pretty-much free reign when asked to design labels.

Mostly...

But contests just let me play around without any pressure. I can try out new things, just for the sake of having fun with art. This goes back to childhood, where drawing was part of playing. I drew because it was fun to do. I still scribble the occasional cartoon during meetings or whenever, just for fun (I need to do that more... we have a lot more meetings now). I find that I have more fun with contests if I focus more on creating artwork I like, rather than trying to make something that might be "a winner". And anyway, trying to make "a winner" really doesn't work, since you never know what a particular programmer is going to like.

I hadn't planned on entering the Failsafe label contest, because I'd been working on a couple of other labels recently (K.O. Cruiser and Duck Attack! - coming soon-ish to an AtariAge store near you), so I really didn't want to put a lot of time into another illustration, plus I had a hard time figuring out what to do for a label for the game. If an idea doesn't strike me pretty quickly when playing a game, then I've found there's no point in trying to force one to happen. Also, since I'd done some tank labels for the Incoming! contest, I didn't just want to repeat myself... :roll:

But late last week, after playing the game some more (if you haven't played it, it's a bit like Strategy X), the thing that caught my attention most was the need to figure out a code to stop an enemy missile launch. You do this by finding pieces of the code along the way. So I was wondering, "Where would you find pieces of a launch code?" Then I thought, "the 'football!'" This is the code term used to describe the briefcase the President of the U.S. carries around, to enable him to launch nuclear weapons. Let's see him get that through airport security! :roll:

Anyway, so I sketched out a quick idea that told a story. These bad guys are carrying around these cases that can launch the missile. So you (in your tank) have to track them down, and get the cases away from them, to get the codes. Now this part doesn't actually happen in the game, but hey - labels are subject to interpretation. Read the Super Breakout manual sometime if you don't believe me. I made it look like "something bad" happened to the courier, and that resulted in the case being damaged, and only showing part of the code. If you were able to get the whole code from one case, it'd be a pretty short game!

I made some other sketches after this, trying to get the details of the case right, but nothing else worked as well as this one. I also wanted a different look to this, so I opened the sketch in Painter, and just painted pretty roughly over the top of it. It's probably not a very accurate tank (since I didn't look up any reference for it), but that wasn't the point. The point was conveying a mood, telling a story, and playing around with digital paint for a "look". I was fairly pleased with the end results:

Once I finished with it, I felt it lost too much of the feel of the original sketch, so I overlaid part of the sketch back over it. That helped to add back some of the rough quality I was looking for.

The text at the top is a bit hard to read, but that's intentional. Yes... it may be considered bad design, but I don't think all of that little text ("Atari", "Video Game Cartridge") is all that important. The main things you need to read are the "7800" and the name of the game. I wanted the rest to blend in with the artwork's color palette.

I originally had re-created the game's title-screen font, including the stencil cuts. But in the end, they just made the title too hard to read, so I just made the logo without them (based on a modified Eurostile Bold Extended).

The second entry I did definitely fits in the "just having fun" category. I was trying to figure out how to make a cartoony label for the game, but not all games lend themselves to a cartoony label. Then I remembered part of the instructions on the contest page that read: "To be consistent with Bob DeCrescenzo's previous game releases...". So, since three of Bob's previous games were Pac-Man titles, I thought, "Of course! Pac-Man in a tank!"

And I quickly sketched that up. It needed something else though, and I was thinking of having a monster running away from him. But then I thought better of it, and drew one of them caught under the tank treads instead:

(I drew the monster offset, since I didn't want to erase any of the tank I'd drawn, and I could put everything together later anyway.)

I took the sketch into Illustrator, and re-drew it there, cleaning up the lines, drawing the letterforms and adding color. Then I did some shading and the background in Photoshop:

I particularly like the monster trying to claw his way out from underneath the tank tread, and the fact that inevitably, he's going to get caught up in it and make a satisfying "flump, flump, flump" sound as his face repeatedly smacks into the ground. It's the simple things...

Of course this wasn't done with any intention of it being a serious entry, but I figured I'd submit it anyway, just for fun. If Bob or someone else gets a laugh out of it, then it was worth the effort. For that matter, since I had fun with it, it was worth the effort.