Page 34 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #38 FREE Edition

THE ART OF OSGM
THOR THORVALDSON AND DEXTER MORRILL
With the exception of an issue or two, two artists have done nearly every cover of Old School Gamer since its start in 2017. Starting out with Thor Thorvaldson for approximately the first 1/2 of our existence and then, most recently, Dexter Morrill for the last couple
of years. While each has their own style that lends to the cover art, they do have a similar touch on the work they do for Old School Gamer.
Approximately every two months they spend on and off time for a couple weeks working on these covers for us. It starts out by me giving them the theme of the issue and a couple of ideas as to what
to do with it. Then a sketch comes
By Ryan Burger
back to us usually a couple of days later with their concept, minor tweaks are sent back and the heavy work begins. First as a black and white digital piece, and then colored in and delivered to Old School Gamer usually a couple days before we go to press.
It all started in August 2017 when I got back from the Classic Game Fest in Austin, Texas.
I was on the hunt for writers, artists and more. I had posted on some
retro video
game chat
groups and
Thor stepped
up... “Honestly,
I think I just
asked! If I
remember
correctly, I
think I emailed Ryan and asked if he needed any art for the magazine when I first heard about it on social media. Luckily, he did and here we are!”
THOR
On the first cover of the magazine we wanted to show all kinds of games so we knew it would be a collage of characters and boy-oh-boy did Thor deliver with 40+ characters that we put on that first issue. Thor tells us it’s his second
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OLD SCHOOL GAMER MAGAZINE • ISSUE #38
favorite cover of the magazine. Thor said this about his favorite “This
is a tough one! If I could only pick one probably my Super Metroid cover”. Overall, some of his favorite characters to draw are “classic
and modern Nintendo characters, especially Samus Aran, Donkey Kong, Mario franchise characters and classic Namco characters such as Pac-Man, Dig Dug and Mappy.
Thor continued working with Nintendo Force and other places after leaving Old School Gamer a couple of years ago: “Currently I am featured in each issue of Nintendo Force doing a comic called Dr. Chozo, which is a kind of mash-up of Akira Toriyama’s