Mike Winterbauer is the artist behind some of the most fondly remembered retro box art from gaming’s golden age, including covers for classic titles such as Might & Magic, Wing Commander and Spaceward Ho!. Okay, maybe that last one doesn’t count.
If you ever wanted to know the process behind those classic video game covers, you can download a free .pdf from Winterbauer’s website in which the man himself tells us how he did it.
Mostly, it involved lots of heroic posing in his underwear. Winterbauer couldn’t afford to hire models, so he had to get his friends to photograph him in the pose he wanted to draw. Enough childish giggling, though, the fact is that his work rate, particularly in the early 1990’s, was astonishing.
He’s also responsible for the fantastic map of the land of Xeen, shown below, from 1992’s Might and Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen. Just look at this wonderful bloody thing. Video game packaging nowadays has none of this effort, love and care anymore. Unless you pay for a collector’s edition of course.
You can download the free .pdf here.
