Cover artists

[Juan F. Ramirez]

I see lockdown sits well to Rorthron!

[Audionautas]

Hi all!

More cover artists uncovered. Today reviewing Level 9.

LEVEL 9

* SNOWBALL (1983). On the ZXDB we have Godfrey Dowson credited as the artist. However this refers to a re-release of the game in a proper box, not to the amateurish first release of the game. According to the instructions manual on the DB the original artwork is by Tim Noyce and Peter Sherwood. I think this information should be added.

* RETURN TO EDEN (1984). According to this blog, the cover artist is Godfrey Dowson. Link: http://ifguide.if-legends.org/essays/Level-9.html

The same text is also referred on the Return To Eden Wikipedia entry for Silicon Dreams trilogy. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Dreams

The game's first cover depicted a robot fighting a monster plant in Enoch. The robot resembled a comic book character, so to avoid legal troubles, Level 9 commissioned Godfrey Dowson to do a new cover. Dowson's illustration depicted another robot in the jungle looking towards Enoch. Level 9 was not satisfied with the result and asked Dowson to do it again. They liked the third cover so much, they hired Dowson to do artwork for the re-release of their old games as well as for their future titles.

* EMERALD ISLE (1985). Cover artwork: Godfrey Dowson. His signature is clearly visible on the cover as G. Dowson and he is credited on the instructions manual.

* THE WORM IN PARADISE (1985). Cover design: Margaret Austin. Cover picture: Godfrey Dowson. According to the manual.

* GNOME RANGER (1987). Original graphics: Godfrey Dowson. Taken from the instructions at Gamesdatabase (although it is an Amstrad CPC url, it is a multisystem manual). Link: https://www.gamesdatabase.org/Media/SYS ... puting.pdf).

* KNIGHT ORC (1987). Although Atari Legend website credits Steve Weston as the cover artist (Link: https://www.atarilegend.com/games/games ... me_id=3408), according to the instructions manual the game credits on the art department are as follow:

Original Paintings: Godfrey Dowson
Additional artwork: Neil Strudwick and Stuart Lee
Poster: Paul Human

* INGRID'S BACK (1988). Cover picture. Godfrey Dowson. Ingrid design: Pete Austin, Peter McBride, Godfrey Dowson as it is credited on the instructions manual.

* TIME AND MAGIK (1988).Pictures: Godfrey Dowson, Neil Strudwick as it is credited on the instructions manual.

* SCAPEGHOST (1989). Cover picture: Godfrey Dowson as it is credited on the instructions manual.

Thank you! and stay safe!

✓ Reviewed

[druellan]

CCS

* DESERT RATS (1985). Illustrator. John Berry (1925-2009). Painting: 25 Pounder Gun and Team in Action on the El Alamein Front (1942). Reproduced by permission of the Impresial War Museum. Link: https://www.artuk.org/discover/artworks ... front-7105

* GALLIPOLI (1986). Illustrator. Norman Wilkinson (1878-1971). Painting: The Base Camp under Shell Fire. August 1915: The SS 'River Clyde' Aground. Reproduced by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum. Link: https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the ... round-6450

The use of historic paintings on the inlays is certainty an interesting challenge. We were discussing this situation recently with Einar. We called it "The Mona Lisa dilemma", we picture the situation on where a game has The Mona Lisa as the cover art, and a graphic designer composed the inlay. We credit Leonardo da Vinci? The designer? Both?

So, for now I'm crediting everyone, and adding a note about the name of the original painting.

* YANKEE (1987). Illustrator. Oliver Frey. His well-known signature is not included on the canvas, but I was sure it was his, so I asked Mr. Frey himself by email and this was his answer.

"Your bet is correct, this is one of mine – though I had all but forgotten it, probably one of the last I did for CCS."

Thanks for taking the time and contact the author!

[Rorthron]

The use of historic paintings on the inlays is certainty an interesting challenge. We were discussing this situation recently with Einar. We called it "The Mona Lisa dilemma", we picture the situation on where a game has The Mona Lisa as the cover art, and a graphic designer composed the inlay. We credit Leonardo da Vinci? The designer? Both?

So, for now I'm crediting everyone, and adding a note about the name of the original painting.

Personally I can't see any defensible reason for treating what you call "historic" paintings differently from others. Why does the age of a picture matter? Are pictures from the 1980s not "historic", anyway? Or are you considering how famous the artist is, and if so, how do you determine how famous an artist needs to be to get special treatment? And what benefit is there from going through this whole process? This seems to me to be introducing complications that aren't really there. If the art is by Leonardo da Vinci, then it's by Leonardo da Vinci.

The issue of graphic designers is a separate one. The main difficulty is that we rarely know who the designer is. Of course, that does not stop SC/ZXDB including the information, and there are plenty of other cases where its information is partial. But even if we include the information, I doubt it has much impact.

So it probably makes sense to credit both, but the graphic designer should have a different role from the artist. To describe them both as artists seems wrong to me. They are very different creative roles. Including graphic designers with artists obfuscates the artist information.

[Audionautas]

The use of historic paintings on the inlays is certainty an interesting challenge. We were discussing this situation recently with Einar. We called it "The Mona Lisa dilemma", we picture the situation on where a game has The Mona Lisa as the cover art, and a graphic designer composed the inlay. We credit Leonardo da Vinci? The designer? Both?

So, for now I'm crediting everyone, and adding a note about the name of the original painting.

Personally I can't see any defensible reason for treating what you call "historic" paintings differently from others. Why does the age of a picture matter? Are pictures from the 1980s not "historic", anyway? Or are you considering how famous the artist is, and if so, how do you determine how famous an artist needs to be to get special treatment? And what benefit is there from going through this whole process? This seems to me to be introducing complications that aren't really there. If the art is by Leonardo da Vinci, then it's by Leonardo da Vinci.

The issue of graphic designers is a separate one. The main difficulty is that we rarely know who the designer is. Of course, that does not stop SC/ZXDB including the information, and there are plenty of other cases where its information is partial. But even if we include the information, I doubt it has much impact.

So it probably makes sense to credit both, but the graphic designer should have a different role from the artist. To describe them both as artists seems wrong to me. They are very different creative roles. Including graphic designers with artists obfuscates the artist information.

I agree with you [mention]Rorthron[/mention] and [mention]druellan[/mention] that more information the better. In my opinion if we even have only the name of an advertising agency we should include it on the ZXDB, that's better than nothing and a starting point to research for others or ourselves in the future. The perfect scenario on the ZXDB would be to have to every contributor to the game credited as it deserves; programmer, graphic artist, musician, cover artist, cover designer and so on. That would be great, but for the moment I think we should include the most accurate information possible and even go beyond if we can.

Let explain myself. I have the intention to make a post later today about some things missing on Hewson titles on the ZXDB. One of the games I want to talk about is Pyracurse. On the ZXDB are only credited the two Hewson in-house coders at the time; Keith Prosser and Mark Goodall. At the moment I don't know who the cover artist was for that game (I'll find out), but I know that Dominic Robinson took part on that game but remained uncredited. When he talked on Retro Gamer's magazine issue 77, page 55 for the From The Archives section covering Hewson story he said exactly:

"In the end I was hired on the strength of the Spectrum code I had showed them. I ended up doing a wide range of jobs -code, graphics and level design- for Pyracurse before I eventually moved on to write Uridium".

My point is that we must include as much information as possible about any game, even if we have been aware of that detail or that little data 35 years later thanks to a Retro Gamer feature or we know the title of such painting or illustration. In Pyracurse's case, it was Hewson's first original game developed by its in-house team and had a really long development process (more than a year, in part because Goodall and Prosser weren't really games coders, they were more application developers). I think that Dominic's help in finishing the development of the game was absolutely crucial and at the moment we haven't that information on the ZXDB and obviously is not included on Dominic's softography (we did include it on El Mundo del Spectrum Plus book, which I contributed to: http://www.elmundodelspectrum.com/libro/). But well, I'll post about Pyracurse and other Hewson games later today in another thread.

Thank you! and stay safe!

[Rorthron]

The Byte Back rerelease of ATF is signed OZ91 (I think). Does anyone recognise the signature?

✓ Reviewed

[Rorthron]

Tintin on the Moon - Georges Prosper Remi ("Hergé")
Per signature

Other credits in the instructions contradict the information in SC/ZXDB:

Graphics: Didier CHANFRAY
Program: Daniel CHARPY, Philippe NOTTOLI
Music: Charles CALLET
Marketing: Veronique GENOT

I think the authors need to be changed in SC/ZXDB. (Note SPOT/SPEX also contradicts SC/ZXDB and agrees with the instructions.)

✓ Reviewed

[Rorthron]

Monty on the Run is signed DB.

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[Rorthron]

Sam Stoat Safebreaker also has the same DB signature.

✓ Reviewed

[Ersh]

Other credits in the instructions contradict the information in SC/ZXDB:

Graphics: Didier CHANFRAY
Program: Daniel CHARPY, Philippe NOTTOLI
Music: Charles CALLET
Marketing: Veronique GENOT

I think the authors need to be changed in SC/ZXDB. (Note SPOT/SPEX also contradicts SC/ZXDB and agrees with the instructions.)

David Perry and Nick Bruty handled the Spectrum port of Tintin, the credits in the instructions are most likely from the original Amiga game.

[Rorthron]

Death Wish 3

According to the following site, "Steve Kerry and Marco Druoe provided the artwork"

https://www.gremlinarchive.com/index.ph ... -spectrum/

✓ Reviewed

[Einar Saukas]

Miami Cobra GT - Peter Austin
Per PJA signature
Per instructions:

Programmed By: Nigel Speight
Cover Illustration: Peter Austin

Note SC/ZXDB has a credit to Peter Frith not mentioned in the instructions.

This information came from old WoS. Pete Frith even gave WoS a formal approval to host his games:

https://www.worldofspectrum.org/infosee ... ete+Frith$

Too bad the actual permission letter is not available anymore.


EDIT: Pete Frith is mentioned in Retro Gamer #153 page 66 in an interview with Tony Crowther. It seems Pete Frith worked at Alligata, although that's not clear.

✓ Reviewed

[druellan]

* IVAN "IRONMAN" STEWART'S SUPER OFF ROAD (1990). VIRGIN GAMES. According to Mr. Rowe's website he did the poster included with the UK edition of the game with a completely different art to the game cover. Link: https://davidrowe.net/ivan-ironman.html

There is extra information on the instructions:

Illustration by Words and Pictures
Packaging Design by Khartomb

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[druellan]

Personally I can't see any defensible reason for treating what you call "historic" paintings differently from others. Why does the age of a picture matter? Are pictures from the 1980s not "historic", anyway?

Yes, this is a very good point. This sounds like an arbitrary decision, better to have simple and clear guidelines.

So it probably makes sense to credit both, but the graphic designer should have a different role from the artist. To describe them both as artists seems wrong to me. They are very different creative roles. Including graphic designers with artists obfuscates the artist information.

That is what I feel, and poor Einar knows I'm serious But for now I'm pasting all this cases on a spreadsheet to compile a list and see how many we have.

I agree with you @Rorthron and @druellan that more information the better. In my opinion if we even have only the name of an advertising agency we should include it on the ZXDB, that's better than nothing and a starting point to research for others or ourselves in the future. The perfect scenario on the ZXDB would be to have to every contributor to the game credited as it deserves; programmer, graphic artist, musician, cover artist, cover designer and so on. That would be great, but for the moment I think we should include the most accurate information possible and even go beyond if we can.

Yeah, I like the way Mobygames credit the authors, for example, but they don't seem to have a centralized role system as the ZXDB, more concise and elegant, but on the other hand is forcing us to be careful about changes that might impact the legacy information on the database, or create a void of information we might need to fill.

[druellan]

In fact, the instructions contain a large number of credits, only some of which are recorded in SC/ZXDB:

Interesting, on the ZXDB we have Paul Griffiths on the team, but seems that he only did the playtest:


We usually don't add testers to the ZXDB, since we don't have that role, but I don't want to remove information if I can avoid it, so, I'm going to keep Griffiths, but below the rest of the authors.

✓ Reviewed

[richl]

Boilerhouse by Front Runner (https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.php?cat=96&id=614) currently has the front of the instruction leaflet down as the inlay whereas the proper inlay has the name of the game on the spine and is one of those clamshell type affairs. The illustration is credited to Steve Newport and you can see it on the leaflet I mentioned above and it's also in the text file containing the instructions.

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[Juan F. Ramirez]

Extreme (Digital Integration). Artwork by Steinar Lund:

https://www.facebook.com/steinarlundart ... 033326779/

https://www.mobygames.com/game/zx-spect ... reme/promo

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[druellan]

Anfractuos - "Martin"
Per signature
Martin Severn?

I was trying to dig into this a bit more, but there are no information about Martin as a cover artists, BUT he was an artist, so it is very plausible, but since we don't have confirmation and the author is credited in the game on other roles, perhaps is better if we leave this one alone for now. Martin is also the level designer, so, we can credit him for that, aaaaand this game has border effects!

[Rorthron]

Anfractuos - "Martin"
Per signature
Martin Severn?

I was trying to dig into this a bit more, but there are no information about Martin as a cover artists, BUT he was an artist, so it is very plausible, but since we don't have confirmation and the author is credited in the game on other roles, perhaps is better if we leave this one alone for now. Martin is also the level designer, so, we can credit him for that, aaaaand this game has border effects!

Yes, leave it out of we're not certain. I just wanted to make the partial information available in case anyone could use it.

[StooB]

Steve Brown

currently credited for Inlay/Poster Art for Cauldron.


as per this, and this:

- his role on Barbarian and Cauldron II should also be Inlay/Poster Art

- he should also be listed for Inlay/Poster Art on Barbarian II

As the Eurogamer article refers to him as the "creator of the smash hit games Cauldron, Cauldron 2 and Barbarian", he should presumably also have the role 'Game Design/Concept'.

✓ Reviewed

[StooB]

Steve Blower

His role on ZZoom is presumably 'Inlay/Poster Art' as he did all the other Imagine covers. Mobygames agree.

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[StooB]

Terry Greer

is currently only credited for 'Inlay/Poster Art' on Diamond Trail.

These titles credit him for 'Inlay/Poster Art' on the inlay itself:
Adventures of Barsak the Dwarf
Africa Gardens
The Curse
Devil's Island
Games Tape 1 (Cover #2)
The Hollow
Madcap Manor
Magic Castle
Mindbender
Spyplane


This page on his website shows he also did the artwork for:
The Illustrator
Savage Pond
Forest at World's End
Tales of the Arabian Nights

and this page shows he did the 'In-game Graphics' for:
After Shock
Heroes of Karn
Jewels Of Babylon
Warlord

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[Audionautas]

Hi guys!

Some additions to the cover artist department on ZXDB.

* Fish! (Magnetic Scrolls / Rainbird Software, 1989). (Link: https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 6&id=10797). The cover artist was the amazing Steve Weston. A couple of years back this cover could be checked through his website http://www.swsstudio.co.uk/, sadly now offline. I've been trying to access through the Wayback Machine on archive.org to find a snapshot, but although you can browse the website, all the pictures there are broken, but believe me, Fish! was done by Steve Weston.

* Cecco Collection (Hewson Consultants, 1990). (Link: https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 6&id=11568). The cover for this compilation is based on covers done by two artists: Steve Weston and Nick Davies. Hewson worked a lot with these two artists and at least in three of the four games of that cover we have confirmed the authorship. Obviously someone worked on the layout and lettering (probably Weston), but the basis of the artwork are those two artists, so their names should be included as contributors.

* Four Smash Hits (Hewson Consultants, 1987). (Link: https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 6&id=11179). In this case we don't know who did the layout of the cover, but all the four games in this compilation have covers credited (and confirmed) to Steve Weston. So I think his name should be included as contributor.

All the best!

✓ Reviewed

[Juan F. Ramirez]

Rambo 3, artwork by Renato Casaro (also The Neverendind Story 1 & 2, already in ZXDB), according to this tweet:

https://twitter.com/postersdecine/statu ... 33664?s=19

This guy usually restores videogame artworks, check his interesting timeline.

✓ Reviewed

[druellan]

Miami Cobra GT - Peter Austin
Note SC/ZXDB has a credit to Peter Frith not mentioned in the instructions.

He seems to work among NIgel Speight making the music, he is mentioned on this game from the same author: https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=3840