Artist Profile: Andrew Bosley

Rapid Response:

Name: Andrew Bosley

Date / Place of Birth: 1979 / California

Where are you from?: California, but I claim North Carolina as my real home.

Where do you currently live?: Prescott, Arizona

Married? Kids?: I’m married with 5 kids

What’s your favorite board game of all time?: Scythe

Who’s your favorite artist? N.C. Wyeth

If you had to be shipwrecked on a deserted island, but all your human needs—such as food and water—were taken care of, what two items would you want to have with you? Pencil and paper

You’ve been given an elephant. You can’t give it away or sell it. What would you do with the elephant?  Open an elephant burger shack 🙂

So…where to start? Well, I was born. Then on my first birthday…wait…I’m getting ahead of myself. When I was 5 months old…no no no…that’ll take too long to tell. Long story short, I’ve been drawing all my life and I’ve been blessed to make a living doing it. I have no other skills, so I don’t know what else I’d do. But it was a process. I went to college with the intention of becoming a 3D modeler in feature animation or video games. While I worked towards that goal, I had to take a lot of illustration and concept art courses and I fell in love. Illustration and concept art are different, but related and overlap in many ways. I changed my focus from 3D to 2D and got a job as a full-time concept artist for Ubisoft shortly after graduation. I loved the work but always knew I wanted to be a freelancer. So after 7 years, I quit my job, moved across the country, and started my own illustration/concept art freelancing business. It had its ups and downs for the first few years and I was still working exclusively for video games.

Eventually, an art director at Fantasy Flight Games reached out with a board game project that he thought was a good fit for my style. Mission: Red Planet was my first professional job in board games and I loved it. But I assumed it was a one-off opportunity and quickly shifted back to video games. Then FFG came back with another game, the redesign of Citadels. I was getting the taste for the industry, but was still on the outside. It wasn’t until an art director at Starling Games contacted me that my new career in tabletop really began. Everdell was the perfect project for me! It was like someone asked me to illustrate a board game of my choosing and I put everything into it. It has since been very successful, with several expansions and a large fan base. Since then, I’ve had a chance to work on a number of great games, including Tapestry, Merchants of the Dark Road, Caylus 1303, and the new Love Letter. Now, I work in board games all the time. And between personal and client projects, I’ve had the chance to touch every aspect of game design and development and there’s no place I’d rather be.

Right now I’m working on some great projects for clients, as well as some cool things within my own brand Wits End Studios. Look out for my next major project, The Wanderer’s Guide (www.thewanderersguidebook.com)…a 50+ page, fully illustrated, system-neutral, fantasy atlas designed as an inspiration resource for the RPG community. It’s my biggest project to date and it’s coming to KS mid November.

Follow Andrew on Instagram: @andrewbosley

Visit his website: BosleyArt.com