SideQuesting is thankful to have ties in the art, music, and design worlds. Each month, we have asked our friends in these industries to recreate our logo in their visions. We think that you’ll enjoy seeing how others view our website, our community, and our passion through their eyes and hands. In return we will present their work for the entire month, and they’ll become our featured artists.
For the month of November 2011, Chris Majewski submitted a wonderful interpretation of our logo. Taking cues from dungeon-crawlers like Diablo III and Torchlight, and playing off of the growing hype for upcoming RPG Skyrim, Chris designed around the magic and weapons associated with the act of questing. An alternate logo, just featuring the SQ monogram, can be found here.
The logo idea stemmed from more than just the popularity of modern games. Chris has been a gamer since his father brought home an Atari VCS, though he admits that being a geek is first on his list. He uses art to tie those aspects of his life together, adding an injection of the imagination that he developed as a child playing with action figures. A lot of Chris’ recent work has dealt with video games, and directly stems from escapades with games like Fallout 3, Castlevania or Diablo.
When it comes to his art, it’s clear to see that he has a knack for the cartoon and comic style. However, having a strong background in Art History has exposed him to artists that stirred up his imagination even further, like Tim Burton and Rene Magritte. Other influences include Bill Watterson, who created Calvin & Hobbes iconic look with his line weight and attention to details. These styles combine in his work to create strong contrasts of light and dark, objects that glow and leap off of the page, and a bit of “Saturday Morning Horror”.
Chris’ awesome work can be seen in his Deviant Art portfolio, tophoid.deviantart.com/
Castle Crashers is one of the iconic games of this generation, not only for its incredible fun but also for its terrific visual design. Chris took his love of the game one step further, creating this non-commissioned piece depicting the game’s heroes. With just a little shading and color contrast, the image has great depth and three-dimensional layering.
I first knew of Chris through the above image, which became the official podcast artwork for Joystiq.com’s Xbox 360 Fancast. I had always wondered who created the great artwork, as it captures some awesome science fiction references. Glowing orb holograms FTW! The image depicts hosts (from left to right) Alexander Sliwinski, Richard Mitchell, and Dave Hinkle huddled over an Xbox 360 icon, no doubt plotting the takeover of Mass Effect‘s Normandy.
Then, when X3F hosted a special live show at PAX East in 2011, Chris was once again called to action to create artwork for an ultra-limited t-shirt design handed out to the audience.
Chris also works on private commissioned work, as seen by this piece above. Intended for use as a Twitter avatar, Chris based the art on the client’s love of MST3K.
Many of Chris’ clients are gamers, and as such ask the artist to create renditions of their custom characters — in this case from World of Warcraft — in a more 2-dimensional format.
Again, a massive THANK YOU to Chris Majewski as our Featured Artist for November 2011. Chris is always looking for new, awesome projects, and can be reached via Twitter at @MagicWhiskey or via email at CMajewskiART@Gmail.com.
Feel free to look at the full gallery below, or see more of Chris’ work at his portfolio page here: http://tophoid.deviantart.com/
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