http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/ en Copyright 2012, The Pickford Bros The Pickford Bros are veteran independent video game designers based in the UK. Their archive documents and preseves work and background material from their old games. http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=539 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=539 Here's a photo from the archives, taken early on in the development of Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint. Development of the iOS version is almost complete, so I thought now would be a good time to post this photo here. I'd done a few sketches and drawin... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=539#comments Tue, 08 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=529 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=529 Yesterday I posted the Clear Bonus and Parting shot graphics that I drew last week for Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint on iOS. Well, here's my 'working out', complete with the fabric bookmark that I forgot to remove when scanning the pages in. As with t... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=529#comments Tue, 07 Dec 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=527 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=527 Yesterday I posted three logos that I drew for Magnetic Billiards: Blueprint, the iOS game we're working on. They represented about an afternoon's work, and as it happened my work notes for these logos all fitted neatly onto a double page spread in my n... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=527#comments Fri, 03 Dec 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=504 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=504 I received a mention on twitter the other day alerting me to a post on the Jul forum about a hidden graphic in our old SNES game Equinox. "How much more of this are we going to find?" I was asked. The newly revealed graphic posted there said "St... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=504#comments Wed, 06 Oct 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=439 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=439 Here's a strange thing I found on an old backup disk - a half finished version of the Amaurote loading screen, but drawn on an Amiga / Atari ST 16 colour screen. I've got no memory of why I did this. I don't think we were ever asked to do a 16-bit vers... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=439#comments Sat, 10 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=438 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=438 This is a favourite graphic of mine. It's the announcer who pops up on the screen in World Darts on the Amiga, to announce that you've scored 180 or whatever, and he pops up on the title screen too. I think we did it as a separate screen layer on the A... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=438#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=437 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=437 This is the rather uninspired loading screen / title screen for the coin-op version of World Darts (also released on Amiga and Atari ST). It was a copy of the original ZX Spectrum loading screen I did a year or so previously, but now with the luxury of ... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=437#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=434 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=434 I drew a loading screen for my friend Paul's home made and home published text adventure Die You Vicious Fish - a follow up to his multi selling Al-Strad. I was really pleased with it - quite a complicated hi-res (4 colour) drawing of a bloke with a mac... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=434#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=433 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=433 Oh dear, another ill-advised attempt to do a coloured background on the Spectrum... Hadn't I learnt my lesson from Glider Rider? I did the bit with the couple at the front ages before the end of the project, and was pleased with the complicated colour s... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=433#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=432 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=432 This was a freelance job, or a 'foreigner', I got due to my reputation as a loading screen specialist. The game was being written by some guys in Stockport (the town where I lived) and I think they knew Nigel Alderton (the Ghosts n Goblins programmer) who ... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=432#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=431 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=431 Xeno was the title I started working on probably on my second day of work! A rather dull screen for this 'future sport' simulator, but the game was so plain looking I must have been stuck for ideas. The strange diagonal line effect on the Amstrad scr... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=431#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=430 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=430 I think I drew these screen at home, inbetween my fortnight's work experience at Binary Design, and starting work there after finishing high school in the summer. I was trying to 'innovate' with the Spectrum screen, and avoid the standard 'bright image ... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=430#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=357 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=357 Another page of concept art for our planned SNES game, Venom Spirit - intended to be our follow up (but not sequel) to Plok! This is just a little rough sketch of the way the main character was going to dive through closing doorways (of which there woul... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=357#comments Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=436 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=436 This was the loading screen / title page for the Amiga version of Feud, which we developed several months after the 8-bit versions. This was pretty much the first graphic I ever drew on the Amiga, and probably my first experience with more than two or f... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=436#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=356 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=356 This is a concept drawing for Silversword (Wizards and Warriors 3), our NES game from 1989 or so. With all this concept art I was trying to do drawings of the game sprites that matched what we could actually draw on screen, on an NES, rather than doing ... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=356#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=355 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=355 This is the loading screen to the Amstrad version of Feud, the hit Mastertronic game we developed in about 1987. This is actually my favourite of all the loading screens I've done. I can't remember why, but I drew a square image, rather than filling th... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=355#comments Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=352 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=352 This is the 20th (of 64!) plant drawing from the encyclopaedia in our Gameboy Colour game 'ET and the Cosmic Garden'. In the backup that survived I'd only fully completed the first 10 drawings (cleaned them up and converted them to CGB format), so for the ... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=352#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=351 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=351 This is the third of three little comic strip drawings I did for our Amiga / Atari ST game Cosmic Pirate, from the late 1980s. They were for a feature on the game in one of the UK video game magazines at the time. I think we did them for free, just to g... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=351#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=350 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=350 This is a concept drawing for Silversword (Wizards and Warriors 3), our NES game from 1989 or so. With all this concept art I was trying to do drawings of the game sprites that matched what we could actually draw on screen, on an NES, rather than doing ... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=350#comments Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=349 http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=349 This is a drawing from the Vampire Circus game design document, from around 1996. I've already posted some of the rough concept art from my sketchbook for this project. This is one of the more finished drawings for the document we presented to potential cl... http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/archive/view.php?post=349#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT