This year the Guildford Games Festival and Awards hired me to create a custom illustration featuring many obvious as well as hidden references to the Guildford and worldwide gaming industry. Guildford is home to many large and indie game studios alike and has been called the ‘Hollywood of games’. Being a Guildford born-and-bred gamer myself with experience in creating game art, it was an enormous pleasure to be part of this project. Due to obvious reasons the festival went live on twitch this year instead of at the usual G-live venue. The much smaller Guildford Games Awards ceremony was held at the Boileroom in at extremely limited attendee numbers, where the design was displayed on large banners and later printed on merchandise.
The official Guildford town coat of arms consists of a shield with the town’s castle in it, topped by a knight’s helmet wearing a crown, in which there is a roaring lion. I began the design with this basic set of elements but swapped the knight out for a dead astronaut to represent the multitude of space related themes in games by local studios. This unfortunate pilot has the Guildford town centre area post code (GU1) on their helmet screen plus both X-Box & Playstation buttons on the crown and helmet. The central jewel in the crown is a reference to No Man’s Sky, the expansive space exploration title created by local studio Hello Games. The lion inside the crown is a more elaborate version of the logo from the legendary Lionhead studios. This is an example of the level of detail and referencing throughout the rest of the design, which has over 30 references in total, some only recognised by local game creators who have been around since the early 90’s.
Clothing, posters and more on the Guildford Games Festival website.
