Rockstar Ate My Hamster Edge 20th Anniversary

Rockstar Ate My Hamster

Edge 20th Anniversary

I was pretty honoured to be asked to create a cover for Edge Magazine's 20th Anniversary (Issue #258). There brief was simple - create Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto : Vice City artwork as if it was a ZX Spectrum loading screen. I knew I could never do justice to the original artwork as well as providing Edge with a decent cover if I was to follow the design brief to a 'T'. The ZX Spectrum screen display is only 256x192 pixels in size! I made a compromise, which was to create a loading screen for each panel of the artwork and then stick them all together to create one large image.

The final artwork I created from the individual loading screens was this.

That's 7 separate loading screens.

Issue 258 came out at the tail-end of August and, although I haven't seen it out in "the wild", I was lucky enough to receive a copy of the magazine with my cover on it. When this dropped through my letterbox, it was the first time I had actually seen it in print form.

I urge you to buy it, of course, especially if you can find my cover.

I have written a "Making Of...." my Edge over artwork article  which should hopefully appear on their website very soon. I'll post the details when it becomes available.

The ones that got away

There was originally a back cover, but this got dropped when the florescent was added. The decision was made to have the back cover a florescent pink due to the 1980's nature of the game and artwork. Here is the dropped back cover artwork.

Finally, here's a curio. Originally, I had planned to have 8 loading screens in the front cover. I even got as far as producing the black and white line pixel loading screen. However, dueto the problems I had colouring it due to the nature of the ZX Spectrums's display quirks, I decided not to use it. For those interested, here's how it was going to look.