Stephen Peringer (1951–2024)

Stephen Peringer was an American illustrator best-recognized for his box art for first-party Nintendo titles. Through extensive freelance work in the 1980s and 1990s, he contributed to video game box art designs and advertisements for renowned companies like Nintendo, Irem, Square Soft, and Kemco Seika, illustrating the box art for Shadowgate, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, Deja Vu, and R-Type, among numerous others. A seasoned video game artist, he continued art roles in the game industry, even after adopting digital art techniques.

Stephen Peringer on airbrushing:

Via Peringer.com: I received my classical training at the Art Center College of Design and graduated with honors. While in school I was blown away by the works of airbrush artists like Charles White III, so I bought one and taught myself how to use it. It took a lot of trial-and-error but I finally got the hang of it and loved working that way for over 20 years.

My approach was to work transparently with inks (later liquid acrylics), spraying light layers of pure colors from the bottle in varying amounts until I achieved the color on the illustration board that I was after. All the mixing was done on the illustration board via airbrush, allowing the bright white of the board to reflect through the thin layers of ink for rich, bright colors. Not many airbrush artists at the time worked this way. This approach is more challenging but is similar to how one of my heroes, Maxfield Parrish, painted his beautiful works. For example, to create skin tones, I would first spray a little orange, then some red, and finally a little purple. The combination of these three inks in the right amounts would create skin tones.

Airbrushing is a tedious business, requiring each hard-edged shape to be cut from a thin adhesive film using an Exacto knife, the piece removed, the exposed area painted, the shape replaced, then the next shape removed and painted, etc. Some paintings required hundreds of shapes to be cut, removed, painted, returned…but the clean, crisp effect was worth it and so rewarding! I think that’s what kept me using the airbrush all those years. And coming up with the right balance between hard-edges and soft blends is what makes an airbrush piece interesting.

Stephen passed away in 2024; a touching obituary speaks to his life, personality, and extreme talent.

OVGA has included below Stephen Peringer’s full known video game box art catalog: