Puyo Puyo Announcement Poster - Celtic Throwdown/ PuyoGB

NOTE: All character designs and logos that were used as part of this piece are copyrighted to their respective owners. The Puyo Puyo logos and characters are copyrights of SEGA and in no way do I claim any ownership or involvement of the initial creation of these designs. The original artwork depicting these characters and backgrounds, as well as the poster's general layout design was done by myself.

During 2019, the online community PuyoGB contacted the tournament organiser for the Irish fighting game event Celtic Throwdown for the chance to bring some games in the Puyo Puyo series to the event in August. The organisers agreed and after talks between both parties, a discussion was brought on to create a banner to use for social media branding to promote the events. From these talks, I decided to throw my hat into the ring to provide the event with a design created by myself. 

The early planning stages had started with the idea of a split design with logos on two sides, which would then have designs behind them reflective of the games they were based on. The logos for the games were included and a brief placeholder area for the Celtic Throwdown details was placed in for a general feel of the positioning. A rough sketch of the Puyo Puyo series character 'Suketoudara' was made, along with outlines for a second (as-yet-undecided) character, along with some brief game mode descriptors.

More roughs made to finalise the production. Basic backgrounds were added to both designs, with the background for the Puyo Puyo Tetris side being based on the loading screen designs from the original game, while the Puyo Puyo Champions (then known as Puyo eSports) side was originally a tiled background of the in-game 'Puyo' characters. The figure representing Champions from before began to see finalisation in the form of series character 'Lagnus'. These changes also included the official logo and font designs for Celtic Throwdown, which were kindly provided by the event organiser for me to work with.

The characters in their three stages of pencil roughs, linework, then colouring! The characters were placed into separate files so that they could be reused for later branding by both teams if need be. 

And here's the final product! The finished characters were placed into frame and the background for the Puyo Puyo eSports side was revamped into a simple spotlight design based on the game's title screen. The info for gametypes was changed to a font layout using the font styling used by PuyoGB for their logo. This piece of art was well-received by both teams, which later led to it's continued use by both PuyoGB and Celtic Throwdown to promote the upcoming event via their social media channels. 

However, just after we had made the announcement, Sega had announced that Puyo Puyo eSports would be receiving an English release under Puyo Puyo Champions! As a result, the tournament would be swapping over to this translated version. Because of this, I was asked to make some changes to the poster to reflect this.

This edit was made mainly as a joke for a one-off announcement gag due to the sudden nature of the announcement. The sticky note was quickly drawn by myself, using the official Sega logo provided for the game as well. The note features the series mascot character 'Carbuncle', as a small cameo.

And finally, the more professional revised variant to reflect the new game! Frankly, I cannot stress enough how fun it was to work on this project. Both teams were a delight to work with and I'd be very happy to work with them again in the future.