The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship - Cory Godbey: Art in Board Games #75
“Rereading that chapter in Fellowship of the Ring, the most terrifying part of those visions in the Mirror was Frodo seeing the Eye, and I knew I wanted to bring that image into the moment.”
Interview with artist Cory Godbey
In this board game art interview, I’m speaking to Cory Godbey, an award-winning artist whose work on The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship artwork caught my eye.
From picture books and board games to documentary films, Cory Godbey has worked with a wide range of subjects and styles to create thoughtful, engaging, and award-winning art for nearly twenty years.
Cory kindly joined me to discuss his career, creating fantasy art, and the brand new The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship board game. Grab a drink and settle in; this is my longest interview yet at 12 minutes read time. With such great answers, I could easily have talked to Cory even longer. Enjoy!
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Thanks for joining us, Cory! Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Thanks so much! I live in the upstate of South Carolina, which is near the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. I grew up in a little town called Travelers Rest. Aptly named, I suppose, because just beyond you begin to get into more of those rolling hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
As a kid in the 1980s and early 90s, I wandered around in the woods a lot, liked to draw, and played my fair share of Nintendo. Though I’ve gotten taller, those three things haven't changed too much.
Have you always wanted to be an illustrator?
I have, though I probably wouldn’t have articulated it quite that way until later in high school.
Drawing has been one of the major constants in my life. I’ve told the story before, but when I was in kindergarten, one class project was to do a drawing of what you wanted to be when you grew up. I didn’t know (I don’t know what five year old would actually know). But I do remember thinking well, I’ll draw a picture of a cop. I vividly remember drawing an old time-y hat with a badge on it, sitting back, and thinking, hey, now that looks pretty good!
I was always the kid drawing during class. My abiding memory of elementary school is doodling in my textbooks, looking up and realizing I had no idea where the rest of the class was in the lesson, and then going back down to my drawings.
When I was 16, I started working as a textbook illustrator. I would go after school during the summers to a small publisher near my hometown. The serendipity of going on to create illustrations for textbooks that future students would, hopefully, go onto deface and add doodles to, just like I did, was not lost on me!
This year marks 20 years working full-time in Illustration, since 2005, if you can believe it. (Longer still if you count those early days doing textbook illustration.) I feel incredibly fortunate in that I’ve never once wondered what I should pursue.
How do you like to create your art? Are you more analog or digital?
For me, everything begins traditionally. What that usually looks like is a light Col-erase pencil sketch on Stonehenge paper or Strathmore 500 series Bristol. From there, proceeding onto a finished drawing usually alternating between Kimberly’s General 2B pencil, Blackwing 602, and your regular old BIC mechanical pencil, 0.7 mm or 0.9 mm.
Depending on the needs of the project, I’ll move on to watercolor and gouache or digital painting. Oftentimes a mix.
I don’t usually like drawing digitally, however, even if I am drawing in Procreate on the iPad, for example, I still do rough sketches on paper and scan those to begin. Each project is a little different, and over the years I found myself adjusting my process and methods accordingly. My goal is always that no matter how I’m actually working, everything feels consistent.
Your passion for fantasy is clear. What draws you to the genre?
In fantasy art, I can find the three things that I am always looking for with my own work: Draftsmanship, Imagination, and Narrative.
Yes, I was always the kid who drew in school, but really I think it was the 1-2 punch of experiencing the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece, Princess Mononoke during my formative years in high school in the late 90s that sent me down the path on which I still find myself walking.
Your artwork is very dynamic, from the composition to the lighting. Where do you begin when creating an image, and how do you convey a feeling of energy in the frame?
That’s very kind of you to say. It’s a great question, and it’s one that I’m not sure I can quite answer.
I know at least the key to my compositions, (most but probably not all) is a triangle. I don’t even plan it most of the time, it’s somehow instinctual. Makes sense to me, though. It’s a foundational, fundamental shape and it’s something the human eye is simply drawn to. It feels weighted and structured.
As for bringing a piece to life, that's a tricky business. The energy and movement in the piece is a part of it, of course. For me, it’s usually trying to approach a feeling or memory. How on earth something as grand as that, a living moment in time, can ever wind its way through shapes or color or lines is the real mystery.
You recently worked on The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship board game. Can you tell us more about this project?
I’d had the chance to work with Matt Leacock on a previous game called Ziggurat. On that project, I illustrated a number of storybook moments for the different “chapters” of the game as well as had the flexibility to create a dozen or so player characters. We had such a good time on that project, Matt was kind enough to invite me on board for this.
The main note I had from the team on Fate of the Fellowship was that these characters could not resemble the Peter Jackson films in any way. Good news to me! As much affection and admiration as I have for those movies, I wanted to do my own take.
In that respect, it was truly the perfect opportunity. Alan Lee's work is my personal favorite glimpse into the world of Tolkien. As such, I have no aspirations to illustrate the books. For me, they have been done. However, getting the chance to do a piece for the cover and spend time thinking about how I might handle the characters? That sounded like a perfect holiday in Middle-earth.
What it looked like for me was going back and rereading certain passages and scribbling through different ways of seeing the characters.
The cover for The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship packs in a lot of story. In your opinion, what is the key to creating captivating cover art?
For covers, I tend to defer to the needs of the project. And my own taste and preferences range, as far as what I like to see for a cover. Whether that’s a single, impactful image, or a character portrait or moment from the story. In this instance, they asked for all three of those.
As I recall, the idea was a central image of Frodo and Galadriel at the Mirror with a series of vignettes giving glimpses of other characters surrounding them.
Rereading that chapter in Fellowship of the Ring, the most terrifying part of those visions in the Mirror (famously, “For it shows things that were, things that are, and things that may yet be.") was Frodo seeing the Eye, and I knew I wanted to bring that image into the moment.
“But suddenly the Mirror went all together dark, as dark as if a hole had opened in the world of sight, and Frodo looked into emptiness. In the black abyss, there appeared a single Eye that slowly grew, until it filled nearly all the Mirror. So terrible was it that Frodo stood rooted, unable to cry out or to withdraw his gaze. The eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.”
For me, that Eye was the key to making the entire cover work. Everything else could hang off that. In fact, when I sat down to begin the final art for the cover, it was the first piece I set out to paint. One thing I'm particularly proud of (why this exactly, I'm not sure, but I am nonetheless) is how the piece bends around either end to accommodate the sides of the box. You've got a side that works for stacking flat on the right and a side that works for standing in a row on the left.
You’ve illustrated instantly recognizable characters, from Lord of the Rings to Disney’s Lorcana. What are the challenges of illustrating such well-known worlds?
Each project is pretty different. With LOTR, I had the trust of the team on Fate to approach the characters how I would see them. I felt like I had as much flexibility as I could possibly want planning the characters and developing my vision for them. Something like Lorcana you’re working with established characters and a style guide for the whole world of the game.
My heart lies with the work I’ve been able to do for the Jim Henson Company. I’ve said it a number of times, but truly, it’s always seemed to me that they want the artist's thumbprint on any given project.
Between books and comics, I’ve been doing projects for them off and on these last 15 years. While, yes, it is licensed work with established characters and worlds, it’s always felt like much more to me. I’ve often described it like a garden. It’s not my garden, but occasionally I’m given the keys to go into that garden and tend a small corner of it. When I’m done, I leave my key on a post at the gate. They know all they have to do is ask and I’ll be back with my gardening gloves.
What's your experience been like working in the gaming industry?
The majority of my work over the last two decades has been in publishing and comics. Some animation projects here and there, but mostly publishing and illustration.
However, the last few years have seen a number of commissions coming in from the gaming world. Which I suppose is why we’re talking in the first place! MTG, Lorcana, and of course, Fate of the Fellowship. One particular experience I would love to highlight is Littlest Lantern’s Sea Beasts.
That’s a game coming out later this year, and I could never say enough good things about that project. One of the best, most collaborative experiences I’ve had in my career. Just such an incredible time working on dozens upon dozens of briny, salt-soaked beasts (and the Vikings to battle them). Can’t wait to see that one out, and people getting the chance to explore it.
From projects like Magic: The Gathering to board games like Ziggurat, everyone has been so welcoming and so kind. Wanted to take a moment and highlight that part of the gaming community.
With the demands of being a commercial artist, do you still have time for personal works?
I can trace a very direct line from any significant client project commission back to some piece of personal work. In many ways, my personal work is what fuels my client work. What that usually looks like is an editor or art director referencing some piece of personal work and saying, that's what we want for this project.
Back in 2008 I began creating a yearly sketchbook. The first few were a hodgepodge of whatever sketches and drawings I had done in that year that weren’t for a client or any particular project. But it was in 2011, I hit on the idea of creating a new sketchbook on a theme. Not just the leftovers or whatever I had scribbled that year but an entirely new collection. Giving myself a framework and limiting the scope, I found, to be expansive.
To take a single idea or a theme and try and look at it from every possible angle and see-through it like a prism. It lent so many more ideas than just doing a one off piece here and there. Ultimately, I have found nothing better for my own personal and professional development than creating an annual sketchbook.
Do you have a favorite piece of art you’ve created?
In 2022, we began construction on a new studio for me. But before I packed up and moved out of my original studio, I wanted to make one last piece to sum up my time in that space. I’d been in that studio for the last 10 years and had to send it off right.
The original drawing for this one is one of the largest I’d ever attempted and based off scribbles for an idea I had back in 2015 but felt unable to fully realize, back then. It also functions as tribute to two of my illustrative heroes, John Bauer and Charles Vess.
The Idylls.
Do you have a dream project?
I love any chance I get to walk in Thra, the world of The Dark Crystal. I’ll draw my way through as often as they ask. And there are a few more stories I'd like to tell from that place.
For projects I would love to illustrate that no one has commissioned yet, I’ve got a list of dream books, of course, but The NeverEnding Story would be the first. Penguin, Penguin Random House (I think they have the US rights). I am speaking directly to you now.
And you know what, I'd get a kick doing something with Pokémon. I've been a lifelong fan and for fun, I entered the TCG art contest back in 2024. I didn't place with my Feraligatr (and trio of Totodiles), but a friend also entered and did place! And that was exciting.
And as for my own personal work, I’ve been working through a massive, sprawling fantasy story called WHENCE for quite a while now. Essentially, this is the well from which I pull most all the imagery and things for my personal work and sketchbooks. Not ready yet, but it’ll get there!
What are you reading, listening to, or looking at to fuel your work?
I’ve read with my three kids every night since they were small but now that they’re a little older we’ve been on quite a journey through a number of books. The last year or so has seen us go through The Hobbit, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, The Neverending Story, and The King of the Copper Mountains. Right now, we’re in the middle of The Chronicles of Narnia (currently reading The Silver Chair).
As for music, I’m often on a Joe Hisaishi kick. Some other musicians I’ve been playing a lot in the studio recently are Max Richter, R. Missing, and Hiatus. I don’t get the chance to really sit down with many movies or shows, despite how much great stuff it seems is out there. I do watch a lot of documentaries while I’m working during the day. Especially, if it’s something easy to just listen to.
If I’m winding down for a little while in the evening, two recent games I’ve replayed are Link’s Awakening on the Game Boy and Pokémon SoulSilver on the Nintendo DS. Still getting in that Nintendo time.
Finally, where can we see more of your work?
A number of places to keep up! From my portfolio site to Muddy Colors. You can also find me on these social media sites: Patreon, BlueSky, and Instagram.