Inside Illustration Podcast 7 : Gaming
Guests for the Illustration for Gaming season podcast are Catherine Unger, art director and illustrator who has worked for State of Play Games, Broken Rules, HBO, Nintendo and Disney, and Adam Vian, creative director, designer, writer and artist at SFB Games, an indie game studio whose latest game is Crow Country. Our host is Rachel Emily Taylor.
Our guests discuss the importance of the visuals for games, the significance of originality (and how there could be more weird games), the necessity for patience for long term projects, networking for artists in gaming, the impact of AI on the industry and lots more.
Find out the backgrounds of our podcast guests and host below, and listen below or search Inside Illustration on Spotify, Apple or where you find your podcasts.
Catherine Unger, Art Director, 2D Game Artist and Illustrator
Catherine Unger is an art director and 2D artist based in London.
After studying illustration and animation at university, she went on to work on a number of award-winning games over the span of her 12 year career, including titles such as Gibbon: Beyond the Trees, South of the Circle and Tangle Tower.
Catherine’s clients include SFB Games, State of Play Games, Broken Rules, HBO, Nintendo, Disney, Annapurna, BBC, Tate, Cadbury’s, Channel 4.
Outside of the games, she spends her time working on personal illustrations, which usually consist of worried looking animals and sentient plants.
Adam Vian, Creative Director, SFB Games
Adam Vian is a creative director, designer, writer and artist at SFB Games, a small London-based indie game studio he runs with his brother Tom.
They got started making Flash games in the 2000s, and have evolved their work through the AppStore, Steam, and now on consoles such as Nintendo Switch and PS5. SFB Games most notable releases are 2017’s Snipperclips (a launch game for the Switch, and a second-party collaboration with Nintendo themselves), 2019’s Tangle Tower (a murder-mystery detective adventure game) and 2024’s Crow Country (a classic-style survival horror game set in an abandoned theme park).
His current project is The Mermaid Mask, the follow-up to Tangle Tower that takes the form of a spooky nautical detective adventure.
In his free time, Adam likes playing weird old obscure PlayStation 1 games and reading turn-of-the-century adventure novels.
Dr Rachel Emily Taylor, podcast host
Rachel is the Course Leader of BA Illustration at Camberwell College of Arts. She has undertaken residencies at the Foundling Museum, the Bronte Parsonage Museum, Bowes Museum, and the Horniman Museum.
Her research explores how illustration practice might communicate the historical person’s ‘voice’ and examines the value of multiple voices in the museum.
Rachel’s book, Illustration and Heritage, explores the re-materialisation of absent, lost, and invisible stories through illustrative practice and examines the potential role of contemporary illustration in cultural heritage.
