Designer – No, Wait – Artist Diary: Crooks

An Offer I Couldn't Refuse

In February 2011 I had just finished working on artwork for eggertspiele's Principato and was making preparations for the trade fair in Nürnberg when I received an e-mail from White Goblin Games. They had just seen promotional pictures of Principato, which they liked very much, and they asked whether I would like to – and whether I had time to – illustrate a "small card game" in much the same way. The theme would be crooks who needed to be recruited for thievery and burglary.

I had enough time on my hands and was definitely interested in working on this theme. As luck would have it (and this is the truth!) my girlfriend and I had just begun planning a party under the motto "The Godfather".

During the course of our contact it became clear that the game wasn't so small after all – not from the illustration side anyway, as all in all, the game included 32 gangster cards, eight recruitment areas and nine targets to break into, in addition to a Boss card for each player and a few bank notes. In other words, a lot of work to do.

First Steps and a Card Layout

With Jonny de Vries from White Goblin, I first tried to sort out the motto: As the game was to be based on gangsters, burglary and thievery, it shouldn't bear relation to reality. After all, it's just a game! That's the reason why we decided to place the setting in a fictive New York of the 1930s, closer to classical Mafia films and Gangster stories than to today's cities.

Before I start designing artwork for a game, I always try to get a general idea of the theme so that I am able to create credible pictures. This was, therefore, pictures of American cities in the 1930s (e.g., New York, Chicago and Boston), contemporary every day graphics and clothing, and nearly every gangster film that was based in this time.

A card game then begins with the layout of the cards, the balance between the pictures and gaming information. After that comes the theme-based color and form language.

The gaming information and symbols in Crooks are quite straightforward and in each card version identical. It was therefore possible for the illustrations to have more room, which is good for the atmosphere of the game.

The layout kept being revised during the game's development in order to optimize playability. Sometimes new mechanisms were added (the gangs, spy cards, killers and so on), but roughly the first layout was maintained. Optically it should have resonance with old American Bar signs and advertisements – somewhere between sticky bars and Art Déco.

Card layout step by step, and some icons

The Crooks: Nasty Guys and Raunchy Ladies

The main characters in Crooks are, of course, the crooks themselves, so it was important for me that each card showed an unmistakable character, someone who you wouldn't want to meet in the dark, but who you'd hire for a robbery. What was also critical for the design was, on the one hand, the ascending value of the card, and on the other hand the modifying factors of that value. A crook whose value is 1, for example, had to look less strong than an 8 or 9. It was also important for me to have a well-balanced mix of sex, age and race. This was easier to do in Crooks as opposed to a game set in medieval Europe.

A few short comments on the realization of these images: First, I painted the whole background as this picture, in an edited version, is shown on the backside of the cards.

And then the crooks, one after another. I work, apart from sketches, totally digital with a graphic tablet and painting software. I relinquish a lot of layers and draw everything on one surface, from the back to the front and from the rough areas to the details.

Two cards are based on photos of my girlfriend (who has been a model for other game characters before in Dominion: Seaside and Palastgeflüster) and me because I couldn't help smuggling us into this great theme! The other figures are imaginative but are definitely influenced by actors out of well-known genre movies.

"Willie, Why Do you Rob Banks?"

Next in line were the targets. The same process was applied as with the crooks and their value; there is less booty in a Chinese takeaway than in a casino. It was fun making up the names and signs on the buildings.

Note: Neil Crowley, the game author, wanted a casino to bear a certain name, as in another of his games, which is about a casino.

The Hangouts

In order to allocate the cards quickly, we opted for a vertical format, as with the crook cards. Apart from that, we wanted the typical places where the bad guys hang out, from the boxing club to a downtown bar. All the places that cineastes know and love out of different gangster films!

The Criminal Masterminds

There's not much to say here. These cards exist so that each player gets his color and doesn't forget it during the game. The player should also feel like the boss of a gangster clan.

Money, Money, Money

The most important thing in a robbery is the money, which is why there's so much of it in this game. Inventing money was a lot of fun and also a pleasant change to all the illustrations. The bank notes should look realistic but not completely like real dollars – just as the game is set in New York, but a fictive version.

A small tip for riddle fans: All of the bank notes have a different serial number! Each number is made up of the initials and date of birth or date of death of a famous gangster, actor, author or director of a mafia film (in addition to dates for the inventors of the game and their loved-ones) Have fun in seeking and finding!

The Cover Artwork

The box is not very big, so ideas of epic scenery were quickly abandoned. The cover should strikingly show what the game is about: all the variations of bad guys!

That's the reason the cover shows a collage of the gangsters who are in this game, a familiar style from old cinema posters (although in the good ol' times they were hand-painted).

The End

Finally, working on this game was a lot of fun. I don't often have the possibility of creating so many characters in just one game. Whilst drawing I think about each one of them, and create small stories and biographies which I then integrate into the paintings of their nasty faces and odd dresses.

I hope that the players enjoy the results as much as we (Neil, Jonny, Jeroen and I) enjoyed working on it. Having said this:

PUT YOUR HANDS UP AND GIVE US THE CASH!

Dennis Lohausen