Monsuno: Monsters (2010)

Deep into left field

In the early 10’s, I did a couple of projects for Topps Trading Card Co., Star Wars related stuff. At the time I also had a buddy who worked there for a short while before moving onto other interesting organizations.

One day, buddy asks if I wanted to test for a new project they were working on. “Test” means work on spec, and work on spec means you do some work for free in the hopes of getting chosen for a larger project. It is generally frowned upon, widely cautioned against, and often exploitative.

In this case, it was explained that they were working on a new trading card game (yet another!) for a new property that was in development elsewhere. It wasn’t my usual thing, so test work would be required to see if I could be pitched for it. This is one of the few places where test work might be useful: if you seek a look that you can’t point to, you may be asked to do a sample or two to prove you can do it. This felt like a longshot, but what the heck, I’d never tried this kind of thing before. I was given some style guide stuff and asked to pick a couple of characters and creatures and do some samples using them. No further art direction in terms of what they wanted or how they wanted things shown or whatever—this was super early in the process.