{"id":146,"date":"2009-04-20T18:40:43","date_gmt":"2009-04-20T23:40:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/?p=146"},"modified":"2009-04-20T19:25:26","modified_gmt":"2009-04-21T00:25:26","slug":"shellblast-hd-after-25-attempts-the-boxart-is-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/?p=146","title":{"rendered":"ShellBlast HD: After 25 Attempts, the Boxart is Done."},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the main problems facing the Xbox Live Community Games market is the fact that there’s quite a bit of junk. And with no review system in place, you’re literally going by the boxart to choose which demos you want to try out.
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\nWhile there have been a good amount of great games on the service, the amount of great box art can be counted on both hands. Here’s some really fantastic art:
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\nAnd then you have the not-so-great:
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\nNot that any of the above are bad games mind you, but the boxart doesn’t do anything to make the games stand out from the rest. (Not that the boxart has held back any truely great games from selling, as Miner Dig Deep was in the top ten sales overall for a few weeks). So, I set out with one purpose: design a really nifty boxart for ShellBlast HD.
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\nThe first attempts were not all that great unfortunately:
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\nThe boxart was too busy, not all that eyecatching…it was missing a visual POW that draws in the consumer. I realized I wasn’t going to be able to pull this off on my own, so it was time to post on NeoGAF<\/a>, the most influential game forum on the net.
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\nThe results were quick. After posting some details on the game and my current boxart, people jumped in and gave it a spin:
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\nAnd of course some done for a few laughs:
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\nSome said that they liked the ransom note looking boxart I made, placing it on one of the pictures I posted (it’s the first boxart in this next set), so I took it further to see how that would look:
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\nUltimately I wasn’t feeling it. It just didn’t mesh well with the theme of the main game, so it was back to square one. But there were two boxarts done by NeoGAF users (specifically Goldrusher and McBacon) that caught my eye:
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\nIt was decided that the original logo I had for the game was too small and thin to be noticed. So, I took these two boxarts and made mockups of each:
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\nI was torn. I really didn’t know which one to use. One one hand, the black coverart looked really professional and clean. But the red coverart would likely draw a lot more attention. Then, Goldrusher had the plan of combining both into one jam packed cover of awesome. Here’s his mockup:
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\nThat was it…it looked perfect. So I took that and made the almost final design:
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\nYou can view a larger version right here.<\/strong><\/a>
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\nSo, after 25 covers and a weekend of work, the cover is nearly done (some minor logo placement and other things will be done to the art). I think it turned out really well. A big thanks to NeoGAF for all their work and hopefully you’ll see this cover in the Xbox Community Games section of your Xbox 360 in the coming weeks!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the main problems facing the Xbox Live Community Games market is the fact that there’s quite a bit of junk. And with no review system in place, you’re literally going by the boxart to choose which demos you want to try out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-maker","category-shellblast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165,"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions\/165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vertigogaming.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}