Spittin' Game

Here are some images I did for promotion on the Billy and Mandy game that came out in 2006. The game was a lot of fun for me because I love video games and, in fact, I got my start in animation working on a few video games in college. And one day I'll return to the video game world with a burning vengeance!

I was very lucky that Cartoon Network, Midway, and High Voltage let me be as involved as I was, and even luckier that the gang at High Voltage turned out to be so zealous and fun. I knew from the start that I didn't want to do "just another adventure game", but we had to keep the scale of the game sort of small since it was a licensed game and that's just the way the world works when it comes to licensed games.

Eventually we decided to go with a fighting game. The characters in Billy and Mandy are always arguing and fighting, so it seemed only natural that the characters in the game should be able to pick up a club and start pounding each other even if they were supposed to be working toward a common goal.

Here's an earlier version of the game cover that was nixed by Midway because of the fire. It's always interesting seeing how different mediums handle censorship. For instance, we'd never be able to have Billy, Mandy, and Grim ascending to Asgard with little angel wings on the TV show, but having a giant dog breathing fire on a house wouldn't cause the Standards people in Atlanta to bat an eyelash. Billy was also losing a tooth in an earlier version which was removed to "tone down the violence".



Below is the final version, which looks a lot better anyway.



These were the first real pieces of artwork that I created on my Wacom tablet. I've since learned to love the beast. I've always used Photoshop, but being able to use a pseudopencil has totally changed my art life. Now I just need a computer that can more easily handle fifty layers of 600 dpi goodness...