Last week, I announced that there would be some changes coming soon to GHG. Well, today I’m very excited to reveal a couple things that I’ve been working on behind the scenes:

First up is a new banner for the site drawn by Crystal Ferguson, who I worked with at THQ in Phoenix. I always knew I wanted custom artwork for the blog, and I had a very simple vision in my head of me sitting in a room playing old videogames. That’s not really that far off from reality.

Originally, it was just going to be me in front of a TV with a window and posters on the wall. Then I got it in my head that I wanted to have a puppy version of our Rottweiler in the picture sitting with me, which I think turned out great! She doesn’t get to chew on bones in real life, though.

I also got a late EarthBound cameo added to the upper-right. It was originally supposed to be the aforementioned window, but I thought a pennant featuring Mr. Saturn would be cooler. The more gaming goods, the better!

Even though it’s a relatively small detail, Crystal and I went back and forth the most on the TV screen itself. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to show on there, but I thought some type of platformer — my favorite genre — would be the most appropriate.

I didn’t want it to be straight-up Super Mario, so we ended up with what you see there. I think it reads nicely and my face does look like I’m ready to jump and grab those coins!

In the end, it was cool seeing how she took my idea and came up with something that’s fun to look at, capturing my original vision and more. One of my favorite things is how she drew my hands on the controller, since I have so much trouble getting arms and fingers to look right in my own art.

Next up is my new avatar, which another friend and former THQ coworker of mine, Laura Carberg, put together. Although I had originally approached her to work on another banner, I realized that I was going to need an avatar not just for the blog, but for the various social media sites that I post GHG content to.

With that in mind, I believe my only specification was that it be a likeness of me holding a controller or handheld. She came back with several ideas — which were all very cool — including one of me juggling a bunch of different game controllers in the air. However, I kept coming back to this one, so away we went.

I quickly realized that the more realistic an image is of you, the more fussy you can get!

What you see above is very close to what her original image looked like. At one point, though, I wondered what I’d look like with bigger, more Disney-style eyes. While they were less squinty and read better — especially when the picture was scaled down — it didn’t really look like me anymore. So, I changed my mind and we went back to the original.

For those who know me from the world outside of the internet, I think you’ll agree that this really does look like me!

We went back and forth a few times on some other very small details; things that nobody but me would notice, but she was fun to work with and had good instincts about what my sometimes vague requests meant. I was always pleasantly surprised with the results and think it turned out great.

It doesn’t end with the pictures above, though. In the coming weeks, I’ll be featuring interviews with the artists, as well as revealing a few other projects that are in the pipeline.

It feels terrific to be collaborating with my former teammates again, and I’d love to keep that going. Please contact me if you’d like to be part of the fun — I would love to feature as much talent here as possible!