Mike Koelsch (b. 1967)

Michael "Mike" Anthony Koelsch is an American illustrator widely known for his work on the Earthworm Jim franchise, beginning from the first game in 1994. He has painted seven distinct Earthworm Jim illustrations used for video game box art and around a dozen other images for magazines, toy packaging, and promotional usage, not counting miscellaneous spot illustrations and logo designs.

Descriptions of Mike's art often refer to his “retro” style and the inspiration he draws from the classic pin-up and pulp illustrations of the 1950s and 60s (and artists of that era like Norman Rockwell, NC Wyeth, Coby Whitmore and many others). Most of his video game illustrations were rendered in acrylic paints and Prismacolor pencils.

Earthworm Jim box art:

1. Earthworm Jim (Playmates | Game Boy, Game Gear, Genesis | 1994)
2. Earthworm Jim (Playmates | SNES | 1994) separate painting with landscape orientation
3. Earthworm Jim: Special Edition (Interplay | Sega CD | 1995) reuses Genesis cartridge artwork
4. Earthworm Jim: Special Edition (Activision | Windows | 1995)
5. Earthworm Jim 2 (Playmates | Genesis, PlayStation-EUR, Saturn | 1995)
6. Earthworm Jim 2 (Playmates | SNES | 1995) separate painting with landscape orientation
7. Earthworm Jim 1 & 2: The Whole Can 'O Worms (Playmates | DOS | 1996) reuses art from EWJ2 Genesis pack-in poster

Some releases of Earthworm Jim 1 & 2: The Whole Can 'O Worms are instead titled Earthworm Jim 2: The Whole Can O' Worms and use Genesis portrait artwork for EWJ 2.

Mike landed the Earthworm Jim work through his close association with character animator Ed Schofield. Mike signed on at Shiny Entertainment with a two-year contract, while keeping his freelance business going on the side. As Mike described it in The Art of the Box: Basically they hired me as the entire art department. Playmates was [Shiny’s] publisher and they were the ones that sold the game, so I dealt with Playmates a lot, doing the game box, obviously, as well as advertising. I served as art director, illustrator, and occasionally as designer because I did help with the layouts of toy boxes too. I had to do all the Nintendo Power magazine covers and gather up art for the stories and interviews for those. I helped out a lot working on promotional stuff for the trade shows too.

Surprisingly, Mike shared in his interview for The Art of the Box that the box art for the first Earthworm Jim game used a color comp [rather than a final, finished painting]. He describes it as “one of the more finished color comps” of the two or three different ones he had done, but that there wasn’t time for him to do a finished piece, in part because the studio had fallen behind schedule and he was a one-man show doing all of the art, without a team of illustrators below him to lean on.

He separately confirmed that the pack-in poster included with the Sega Genesis release of Earthworm Jim was also a color comp. He had actually presented that one first (as a potential box art design) but a different pose was requested, leading to the now-iconic layout for the game’s box art. While the Genesis and Super Nintendo box arts appear similar, they are separate paintings. The portrait Genesis box art was done first and was a tight comp, as described above. Mike then did a landscape version to match, which was presumably also a tight comp, given time constraints. 

Michael on artist representation:

Via The Art of the Box (page 432–433): It’s give and take. There’s a lot of benefits in having a rep because they have a lot of connections — and especially when I was coming right out of school, I wasn’t really thinking of the gaming industry. I was thinking of book covers and stuff like that. [Tammy Shannon] had a lot of connections in that industry, so it made sense. And being a good artist doesn’t mean you’re always a good businessman .. Billing and dealing with collecting money is very difficult. It’s time consuming and it takes away from the creative side of things.

Mike has been working with artist representative Tammy Shannon (now of Shannon and Associates) since graduation from ArtCenter in 1991.

OVGA has included below Michael Koelsch's full known video game box art catalog:

1. Earthworm Jim (Playmates | Game Boy, Game Gear, Genesis | 1994)
2. Earthworm Jim (Playmates | SNES | 1994) separate painting with landscape orientation
3. Disney’s Timon & Pumbaa’s Jungle Games (Disney Interactive | Macintosh, Windows, SNES | 1995)
4. Earthworm Jim: Special Edition (Interplay | Sega CD | 1995) reuses Genesis cartridge artwork
5. Earthworm Jim: Special Edition (Activision | Windows | 1995)
6. Earthworm Jim 2 (Playmates | Genesis, PlayStation-EUR, Saturn | 1995)
7. Earthworm Jim 2 (Playmates | SNES | 1995) separate painting with landscape orientation
8. Earthworm Jim 1 & 2: The Whole Can 'O Worms (Playmates | DOS | 1996) reuses art from EWJ2 Genesis pack-in poster
9. The Neverhood (Dreamworks | Windows, PlayStation-JPN | 1996) done in clay with colors altered in Photoshop; the PlayStation release in Japan notably uses different colors, which may be closer to the original design
10. Discworld II: Mortality Bytes! (Psygnosis | DOS-USA, Windows-USA, PlayStation-USA | 1996)
11. Disruptor (Universal Interactive | PlayStation | 1996)
12. VMX Racing (Playmates | PlayStation | 1997)
13. Escape from Monkey Island (LucasArts | Macintosh, Windows, PlayStation 2-EUR | 2000)
14. War of the Monsters (Sony | PlayStation 2 | 2003) painted on three separate boards; Mike Koelsch also did a pack-in poster

Note: Mike Koelsch says in The Art of the Box that his poster for War of the Monsters was also supposed to be the box art for the game but that they ended up hiring another artist (to do another image for the box art). While the box does use different art, both are Mike Koelsch's work. The box art was done on three separate boards and was purchased directly from Mike by a collector; accordingly, Mike may not have recognized the published box as his own work once assembled into a single image.