Custom covers for Uncharted

I took a little bit of time this weekend to whip up more game covers. Since I recently finished Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on Backlog (my live streaming show where I play through the unfinished games in my collection; Weeknights, 10pm Pacific on Destructoid's Justin.tv channel), I thought it might be worth the effort. But, just with the Dead Space covers, I really didn't want to make a cover solely for a sequel so I would have to make a cover for Drake's Fortune as well.

The initial idea for the Among Thieves cover was to reference the three-bladed dagger that's at the center of the struggle for much of the game, and I figured I would probably put the image as though it were half buried in snow on the back panel of the page. Which is all well and good for that game, but its predecessor's iconic item is a worn journal. I toyed for a bit with trying to get the book to look visually interesting in a two-tone color scheme but it just wasn't working. I later tried to represent the statue from El Dorado in three colors and it was an ugly, muddled mess.



So, the treasure was out of the question for Drake's Fortune. Another idea considered was a dotted line and a big 'X' on a map backdrop. I liked this because the map would add texture to the design but I haven't figured out how to make the dotted line work in Photoshop and abandoned that idea pretty quickly as well.

Ultimately, I decided to set a theme of discovery with the two covers. Abandoning objects altogether so that I could have consistency, I focused on the people they were centered upon. So we have Francis Drake in the corner of Drake's Fortune and Ponce De Leon on the Among Thieves (except it's Marco Polo in Uncharted 2; whoops! Old images replaced with new hotness). This was way easier to accomplish than anything else since I could use woodcuts of the figures and they'd look great against the map backdrops.



And then there's this thing that I toyed with briefly before abandoning it. I wouldn't show it at all but I wanted to illustrate how out of fashion woodcuts must have become by the 1920's.

Now I make these covers to conform to a DVD case standard because I want them to be consistent on my shelves. Since people have asked and seeing as the Uncharted series is PS3-exclusive and all, I made versions of the first two Uncharted covers which should fit PS3 cases. Download the covers below:

Drake's Fortune: DVD / PS3
Among Thieves: DVD / PS3