Interview with Andrew Bosley
Hi Andrew, thanks for agreeing to have a chat. Let’s dive right in!
I think it is fair to say that most people will know your name from your work on Everdell, so I guess that’s the place I should start, how much freedom did you have creating that world and the critters within it?
Quite a bit. I knew what the theme was going to be about when I was first brought on for the project and we had some base ideas of how we wanted the cards.
The only limitations I remember having were knowing that there were going to be pairings between critters and constructions, and that they kind of worked together. So they wanted to see those critters in their corresponding construction cards. And then I knew what the resources were in the game, and ideally it would have been nice to see those pop up in maybe the way things were constructed.
We concepted a little bit of how that might look, literally taking twigs and stones and resin and turning those into constructions. But in the end, we went away from something that was so literal. At that point, I got to play with just making interesting faces and interesting characters. So it was a really neat experience. They put a lot of trust in letting me run with things. Obviously, I would send work their way to get it approved, but, rarely were there revisions. It was a chance for me to just go make a world as if I was making it for myself.
This was like a perfect project for me. I grew up with the Redwall series and the Secret of Nym, and the American Tail, you know, old animations, that focused on animals and all this sort of stuff. It was a neat opportunity to really get to play with that world that had already been in my mind for some time.
You recently asked me, so I have to ask you, what is your favourite card in Everdell?
It’s such a good question, because it’s so funny I don’t play Everdell as much as people assume that I do. My favorite character is the Ranger, that’s my favorite illustration of the game, but that’s probably a card I rarely ever play.
I’m a sucker for the ones where they activate every spring and fall, so like the Chip Sweep I love, and the Barge Toad, and those critters that give me stuff over and over.
I think Chip Sweep is probably my favourite, although Innkeeper is up there too! So you say you don’t play Everdell as much as other things, do you play any of the other games you have illustrated more?
I love Everdell, and I love the game, and I have gotten it to the table many times. My kids enjoy it, but for whatever reason we always pull other things first. I play a lot of Tapestry. I feel like I actually play proficiently and competitive at Tapestry. I’ve probably put in 50 plus games of Tapestry.
I love Merchants of the Dark Road. I just don’t get that to the table that often. Some of my more simpler games, like the newer edition of Cover Your Assets, we play that a lot as a family. We play a lot of Love Letter too, we happen to play that one with my art on it fairly often.
So what are your favourite games that you haven’t illustrated? What’s hitting the table more than your own illustrated games?
I play a lot of Scythe. I play a lot of Glenmore II, that’s a recent favorite of mine. Notoriously famous in our family is a game called Attika. We have literally played thousands of games of Attika.
I don’t even know Attica. I feel so ashamed. I’ve never heard of it.
It’s an old game. It has a Greek theme to it. I think it’s a beautiful looking game. I play that all the time. We play Spots a lot. I’m actually kind of like a Spots pro!
I love Council of Four. I love Dogs of War. Those don’t come up as often these days. Oh Arnak, of course. I love Lost Ruins of Arnak!
The list of games with your name attached to the illustration seems to be ramping up year on year, with your continued popularity, how do you decide which games to take on?
I’m not particularly picky about the projects I take on. I’m sometimes advised that I should be more picky. It’s more of a question of availability.
I’m very busy, which is wonderful. I feel very blessed to have a lot of work. But there is the old freelancer side of me that just basically says, don’t ever turn work down. I do turn work down now more often, but I really am just always concerned about making sure that every space is filled with a project. This is going to open a floodgate. honestly, if people just ask me, I am very inclined to take on the project. I really don’t like letting people down. So I hate saying no.
How many projects do you tend to work on at a time?
I usually reach a capacity. In years past that number was too high, higher than it should be. Again, going back to the never turn down a job mentality. I have more recently narrowed that down or attempted to.
I try to limit it to a max of three at one time, ideally one or two, in reality its between three and eight at one time.
What other board game artists do you admire and respect?
Oh, there’s so many. I’m quite good friends with most of the board game artists that most people know in the board game industry. There’s The Mico, Mr. Cuddington, which is David and Lina, Beth Sobol, Jacqui Davis, Kwanchai Moriya. These are all friends, we interact and have our own channel that we chat on and hang out. All of them I respect a great deal. Certainly as far as board game artists, I always put Vincent Dutrait top, he’s my favorite illustrator. There’s just something about creating traditional work that he does, that is a harder process than what I do as a digital artist. They’re 90% the same thing. But doing it in a traditional manner is something that’s uniquely challenging and so deserves a great deal of respect.
Do you ever still pick up pencil or brush?
For professional stuff, it’s very rare that I work traditionally. I wish I did. I look up to great artists who painted traditionally.
I actually just recently finished a commission for somebody who wanted me to paint an original thing for them, a custom personal illustration for them, but to do it traditionally. So I worked in acrylics and I’m planning to do a lot more of it. I love it. I draw all the time.
Maybe five years ago, I was never painting anything on a canvas or board or anything like that. And slowly that’s come back and I’m becoming more comfortable with it again, even though I was trained to do that originally. So I expect that there’ll be a lot more of it in the future, perhaps professionally too. Right now it’s just for side things or stuff for me. But I actually am very seriously considering going to traditional work for projects in the future.
Now you very kindly shared a sneak peak of your next illustrative adventure with me, which is a partial sojourn away from board games and into printed books. Can you introduce us to Smoking Bones?
So the Smoking Bones is an original IP that I’ve been working on for about 10 years. It’s the story of Captain Red Jones and his travel company, the Smoking Bones Travel Company, his touring company.
He takes people to the magical places of the world and along the way has adventures and conflicts and challenges that he deals with. It’s a big story. There’s a series of books that I’m working on that tackled the big story as a whole.
The primary medium for this saga, as I’m calling it, is those books. A companion to that story or partnering with telling that story are a few other things. The most important for this audience and for my fans is the board games that will be companions to those books which will be published by Stonemaier Games. After working with Jamey Stegmaier for some time with Tapestry, I pitched the idea of this world to him as an idea for a single game. He was very excited about it and he decided it would be great to do a series of games set in this world.
So anyway, I’m currently working on all different facets of this world. The saga is ongoing, this trilogy of stories that will tell the big picture of the central plot or conflict that is affecting this world. And the games are in development right now.
We have designers for all of the games. They are all being actively worked on and then on the side, I’m also working on some more companion books, which is what I’m preparing for this summer as a Kickstarter.
That is the Smoking Bones Travel Guide. This is the first of multiple travel guides, which are basically in-world fictional travel guides to these magical places that Red Jones and his company could take you to if you booked a grand tour with him.
So this is a whole new world, but there seems to be links to our world. Is that a fair synopsis?
Yes, it is. This world is an alternate Europe, northern Europe specifically.
In some alternate world stories that people create, there’s a branch off at a certain point where it’s our world, but then something changes. Then as time moves forward, our world and this fictional world separate. This is different. This is more like what Tolkien might have proposed for Middle Earth, where it’s wider and separate early on. And as we get closer, it becomes more our world.
The setting for the Smoking Bones is this alternate place called the Northlands. If you look at the map that’s included in the book, it is Europe, but turned on its side. With some variation, there’s new places that are not familiar, and then there are places that should be very familiar. The original concept for this world was actually that these were actual magical places in our world. And it was literally, if you go to Copenhagen, here are the magical places you want to visit when you’re in Copenhagen. That was about 10 years ago, and shortly after that original concept, it became its own little place. But definitely it is our world. How it connects to the world we know is part of the lore and part of the world, but is not fully explained in the books until later.
The first book, is a travel guide, you go to these fictional places and you see what’s called wonders. These are various different things, like the seven wonders of the world, I suppose, but the numerous wonders of your world. Which is the wonder that you would most like to go and see?
It’s a silly one, but it might be my favorite one. There are these rocks in this particular area of Brandimir. Brandimir is one island in the Northlands that is the focus for this book and there will be other books that focus on other areas of the Northlands. But in Brandimir, there is a beach where pillars of rock grow out of the sand, these magical wonders. They look like sheer sandstone pillars that kind of slowly, very, very slowly grow out the ground. But as they grow, pieces chip off. And as they chip off, they change color and then they also take on a flavor. So they are actually rocks that you would lick. You wouldn’t want to eat them because they’re rocks, but you could lick them and they have a range of flavors.
It’s called the Dunharrow Licks. People take those rocks, if they find a really special rock that tastes really good, they take them to local artisans who sculpt them into beautiful pieces of art that you could continue to lick if you wanted to. So that’s the one.
That’s the one. Good answer. I mean, I want to lick some rock now! I’m hungry for more! When does the Kickstarter launch, when’s that planned for?
July 30th is when it launches.
Now you’re working with your son Willard on this project, what’s it like working with your son?
It’s great, he’s a very talented young writer and so it was a great opportunity. He’s still very young but he’s actually quite an accomplished writer in his own way, with his own community that he’s a part of.
He’s been involved in an organization that I think a lot of people know about, but I don’t really spend a lot of time in there. It’s a community called the SCP Foundation it’s like a twilight zone for writing and it’s a community that writes speculative fiction. He’s very involved in that and has made a name for himself there.
I love to write too I feel like I’m a decent writer, but I am the slowest writer ever and in order for this to actually get done, I was like I need somebody to come and help me with this! I asked him if he’d be interested and he was. He’s known about the Smoking Bones world for a long time obviously.
He’s a professional in attitude and practice and he gets a lot of stuff done. It was a great opportunity to work with him and I feel like it’s a really neat father son experience.
Obviously you mentioned the board games before, and as there is a trilogy of books is there a trilogy of games?
I wasn’t quite clear on that. It’s a trilogy of books. I cannot say exactly how many games there are. I can say the official line we have said is: a series of games.
Well, that’s more than I thought I was gonna get, I assumed it would be surrounded in typical Stonemaier secrecy!
I don’t want to speak for Jamey in any way whatsoever. But I think I can say that it is a unique thing that’s happening with this project. It’s exciting, partly evidenced by Jamey’s willingness to talk about this more than he normally talks about any project before it comes out. Obviously things like who the designers are is under wraps and the timeline is under wraps, but even that he would announce that we’re doing this together is something I was not expecting him to do.
I’m going to assume the codeword ‘Bone’ on the Stonemaier project list could be something to do with this! That’s currently in blind playtesting, care to comment?
I will not confirm anything on there.
Thought as much! Thank you so much for taking the time out and having a chat, it’s been an absolute pleasure!
If you want to find out more about Smoking Bones and see a free abridged version of the travel guide, visit Andrew Bosley’s website: https://www.bosleyart.com/
