This is the actual production painting used to create the box for Sierra On-Line's classic adventure game Space Quest IV. It's huge (check the 12-inch ruler on the left-hand side). It was made by Teri Robinson who said the following:
"The painting is acrylic mostly done with an air-brush. The original rough pencil idea was thought up by the other Creative Services artist of Sierra On-Line at the time, John Gamache. The foot on the face was part of John's original sketch idea which I wanted to change perspective on but that was what they liked so I did my best to try and pull it off. There might be a bit of Prisma color pencil on this as well as paint, as that was the technique I was using quite a lot when Sierra originally hired me."
"I'm told the three box illustrations of Roger that I did resemble me at that time. It wasn't a concious effort it just often happens when artists create faces without photo reference. We subconciously recall the nuances we so often see in the mirror. I'm not a blond though."
"I was pretty proud of [this piece] back in the day. I think John was a bit miffed that they gave his idea to me to paint. We had a bit of a small competition between us always trying to outdo the other guy. He was a great painter and this really should have been his to paint. Some of the game artists wanted a shot at doing the box covers too, which made for heavy critique on our work. We worked hard to prove ourselves on each cover. It was important to us to do justice to all the work the teams put into the games. Game designer Mark Crowe designed the box with them standing in green slime but that was also given to me to paint and fine tune the drawing. I also did the VGA redo Space Quest 1 cover the Roger drinking between two aliens. A fun series!
Good times that were sad to see come to an end. I count myself lucky to have been there during it's heyday. Good luck to all you folks trying to bring back adventure games."
The cover art was in the hands of Cindy Vanous who sold it on eBay early June 2012 and generously donated the proceeds to Mark Crowe's and Scott Murphy's "Guys of Andromeda" Kickstarter. The auction, which lasted only 5 days and ended on June 10 2012, received XX bids and a winning bid of XXX.
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