An interview with lead background artist John Paul Selwood

John-Paul Selwood lives in the Shenandoah Valley, VA, where he enjoys the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In his free time he enjoys jogging, listening to music, and cooking. He spent his childhood drawing from age 3, with children's authors/illustrators Maurice Sendak, Mercer Mayer, and Steven Kellogg as early influences. His first introduction to adventure games came from playing Konami's Nintendo version of King's Quest V, with more primitive graphics than the PC version. Later, he bought the King's Quest collection and instantly fell in love with the hand-painted, fairy-tale style graphics that continue to have an influence on his style today.

How did you first get involved with the AGDI team?

I was always a fan of the Sierra classic adventure games, especially King's Quest, and found the AGDI website through a search engine. Around this time, I was dabbling with the program "Paint Shop Pro", and would practice my hand at coloring sketches I drew and scanned on the computer. From the public forums at AGDI, I displayed my work to a couple of board members. With the exposure I got from posting artwork, I was eventually recruited to the AGDI team via instant messenger by Sean Nichols (Naynuke), as my online profile had my AOL screen name at the time.

Tell us about your experience working on King's Quest III Redux. What were some of the challenges you faced?

My first experiences were interesting. I was a huge fan of the remakes they had produced previously, and was a bit intimidated joining the team when it was in the middle of the production. At the time, my skills were decent, but I had a lot to measure up to with the quality of work produced by Johan Botes (Gronagor), Anthony Hahn (Cornjob), and Shannon Novak.

My first assignment involved heavily editing images of the Daventry countryside, which required making the landscape appear burnt or on fire. I had never done such extensive pixel-editing before, and didn't really know where to begin.