Amelie Le-Roche is a veteran video game animator, creating games in her free time. She loves to explore different art styles and unique themes while creating family-friendly board games. She started Zerua Games in 2018 (which means “sky” in Basque) as a creative outlet.
Artwork Samples
Audio Transcript
“Hi, my name is Amelie Le Roche and I have been a board game artist since October 2018.
“I became a board game artist because I wanted to make games. I wanted a creative outlet. Initially, I wanted to do video games but since I was doing this by myself, just to do something creative and I don’t have the technical knowledge to code and all that, I figured why not just make board games instead and that’s what I do.
“The art style I am best known for is simple and kind of varies per project, but I like to try different things and so I’ll do that for my games.
“The first board game I was an artist for was Dino Dig: Risky Sites. That was my first game and I did all the art for it and since then my style has grown and I’ve gotten better with the tools that I use and kind of
evolved with my process.
“The work I am most proud of was for, I think, my game Road Trip … because I illustrated like 18 postcards. I really like postcards. I kind of collect odd postcards which is weird, but so this was a fun project for me to just illustrate random locations and do little tiny postcards. I’m also really proud of my work on Circus Corgis, because we had a corgi and he was the best dog ever. He passed shortly before I started working on this game, so for me it was … it’s … it was a very special … it was a very special game to work on and it’s … it’s dear to my heart.
“I like creating artwork that is very colourful and whimsical. I like to play around with the medium and just try different styles.
“I get my inspiration from … from anything really. I look at other artwork that I really admire and movies, games … everything really that is art or just has character in it.
“I think the most important part of making artwork for boardgames is to have fun with it, to feel free to experiment to … to just play around and try different things and it’s a process. It’s not going to be perfect. It’s not going to be what you envision, but it’s important to just keep going and to just see what happens. It’s just a discovery kind of process.
“The longest I worked on art for a board game was for Synchronized. I’m not really sure how long it took, because I don’t keep track of the hours, because this is just my personal … my personal kind of hobby, but it was … it was in development for a while and I tried different poses and different colours.
“I think the most challenging part of making artwork for board games is to have it look like you envision in your head, because it’s not always gonna work out. It’s gonna be different and that’s not always bad. Sometimes it’s … it’s just part of the organic process.
“In my view, more board game artwork should be more playful and inviting and have more colours and less … less darkness in it, because it’s … it’s something bright and it should inspire and just … and just be fun.
“The artists whose style I admire the most, I would say in board games Beth Sobel is an amazing artist and just her work is just spectacular and also … Tristan Rosen. I really like his just whimsical and fun style.
“My favourite colour is red and it is always the colour that I pick when picking player colour, because I love red.
“What very few people know about me is I actually work in video games for my day job. I’m an animator on … AAA games, so you’ve probably … if you play video games … you’ve probably seen my work.
“If you wanted to become a game artist yourself, I would tell you to join a design group. There’s a lot of really cool groups on Facebook. It’s a big community and it’s … it’s very welcoming and there everybody’s so eager to help each other out and … give feedback and really uplift each other and if you want to get in touch with me you can reach me on Facebook or Twitter @ZeruaGames, that’s z-e-r-u-a games and yeah that’s it.
“I hope you enjoyed this little interview.
“Thanks a lot, everyone.”
Transcript by Make My Game Travel (https://makemygametravel.