Developer Spotlight: Lizzy Dawson
Get to know Vertigo Gaming Inc.’s Lead Artist!
Hey folks! Ryan here. As a dedicated reader of this year’s newsletters, you’ve learned a lot about my experiences working as a writer for Vertigo Gaming Inc. on the Cook, Serve, Delicious! series. While there’s a lot more to tell about writing for these games, it’s only one small part of the whole impressive process. So for this month’s newsletter, I’m checking my inflated sense of self-importance at the door and shining the spotlight on our group’s Lead Artist, Lizzy Dawson, who was kind enough to chat with me about her role and experience on the team.
How did Lizzy join the team and get to where she is?
Lizzy first began working with Vertigo Gaming Inc. during the development of CSD2, but it wasn’t her first time working in the gaming industry. After graduating college, Lizzy joined a small startup that developed and released a bingo game called Bingo Blitz. Notably, she designed the game’s mascot Blitzy—who went on to be featured years later as a huge CGI statue and adorable animated cat in this impressive and catchy commercial. “This commercial is actually supposedly on TV somewhere,” she said as she sent me a link to the video. “I want to see this commercial with this silly cat I drew on TV and I haven’t seen it yet!”
However, getting a contract gig on CSD2 had nothing to do with her previous work in the industry, as it was actually some Giant Bomb fanart she Tweeted that got lead developer David’s attention. “He just sent me an email saying ‘hey, do you want to do the cover art for this game I’m making called CSD2?’” Lizzy explained, “and I was like ‘well I don’t know what that is but I’ll give it a shot.’” David enjoyed working with Lizzy on the cover art so much that he then asked her to work on the fictional restaurant logos as well as several other assets.
When development started on CSD3, Lizzy was brought back to play an even bigger role. She created the cover art yet again, drew many of the trinkets that the player can use to decorate their food truck, and designed and drew the characters Chef, Whisk, and Cleaver for all of the in-game dialog and cutscenes. After wrapping development on CSD3, Lizzy earned a promotion to Lead Artist—but I’ll get to more about that later.
What’s the art process at Vertigo Gaming Inc.?
Lizzy described the process of drawing for video games as being very similar to drawing for other industries. She gets a description (sometimes with a crude scribble from David) of what needs to be drawn, drafts up different concepts, gets feedback from David, makes a more detailed version, gets more feedback, then creates a final version. “It’s just a lot of back-and-forth, similar to what I’ve done in the past” Lizzy said.
What kind of software and hardware does Lizzy use?
Lizzy primarily draws in Adobe Photoshop because it’s what she’s most familiar with and it’s easy to share files with other artists on the team, though she’s working on becoming more familiar with Clip Studio Paint since it features some unique tools and she likes the way it cleans up her brush strokes when finalizing art. However, when working on Bingo Blitz she worked primarily in Flash creating vector art. As for hardware, Lizzy uses a Wacom Cintiq 24HD, which is a pretty cool drawing monitor.
What unique challenges come with working on the CSD series?
Every project has its own unique challenges, and for CSD3 one such challenge was finding photos of people in food trucks that Lizzy could reference for the scale and positioning of the characters for cutscenes. To help overcome this challenge, Lizzy watched an episode of The Great Food Truck Race and took screencaps of people in their trucks to use for reference.
What’s it like to be the Lead Artist?
After doing such a fantastic job with CSD2 and CSD3, Lizzy was promoted to Lead Artist—so what exactly does that entail in the context of this independent game studio? Whereas previously Lizzy required David’s approval for art assets, Lizzy is now a part of the approval process for the other artists, keeping in daily contact with the team and providing her own feedback. In this role, a new focus and challenge for her is keeping everything looking cohesive while also allowing each artist’s individual style to show in the final product.
“A lot of the time I will say to the artists something like ‘you know backgrounds way better than I do, so you have fun with that, but what if we put a plant here?’” Lizzy said.
What are some behind-the-scenes fun facts?
I don’t know about you, but I love behind-the-scenes stuff, which is why I try to share some fun facts in each of these newsletters. I asked Lizzy if she had any secrets or fun facts to share, and to my delight, she had several for me:
Whisk and Cleaver’s design is partially inspired by the Borg Queen from Star Trek: First Contact—specifically the appearance of the wires and the color scheme
Lizzy had no idea that the Chilly Bowl mascot (later named Sundae) that she designed was going to be made into a plushie; David actually surprised her with it by sending some prototype images for her feedback
Many of the CSD3 developers were drawn and hidden in the game in some form (can you find them all?)
While working on the CSD3 trinkets, Lizzy really wanted to include some cute curtain and light options to decorate your truck with, but it ended up being too big of a technological hurdle to implement in time—but she was kind enough to share a concept image with a few examples, which you can see below!
What tips does Lizzy have for other aspiring video game artists?
Lizzy said that, while skill is an important component to landing a job in this industry, there’s a lot of luck involved, too. “That said, the good news is you don’t have to be the super best to have a cool job and have a good work-life balance,” she said. “Especially if people know that you’re easy to work with or a former coworker recommends you. I got a job because I posted fanart to Twitter, which is really silly in retrospect.”
You can follow Lizzy and her incredible artwork on Twitter, Instagram, and her website. And of course, you can follow Vertigo Gaming Inc. and Cook, Serve, Delicious! at all the social media places below!
Twitter - Instagram - Reddit - Discord - YouTube - Facebook
Did you like learning about someone else on the team? Got any other subjects you’d like me to tackle in the newsletters? Let us know what you think on Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, or Discord! Next month I plan to tell you all about the wonderful world of food descriptions and how they shaped the CSD lore!
April Discord Challenge
Our April community challenge is up and running on the CSD Discord — post your entry for a chance to win great prizes like game codes, the iconic Sundae plushie, or replicas of CSD3's in-game gold and bronze medals!