Steve Chorney (b. 1951)

Steve Chorney is a self-taught American artist, graphic designer, and illustrator known for his hand-painted movie poster art. While Steve’s primary focus has been creating images for Hollywood films, he has worked on numerous computer and video game projects throughout his more than four-decade career.

Steve grew up in Buffalo, New York and would get his first experience in commercial art in 1972, after moving to Los Angeles and finding work with a small animation studio in Hollywood. While he did not attend art school or receive formal training, his father was an artist and Steve knew from the earliest of ages that he also wanted to become an artist. Specializing in the entertainment industry, Steve worked as an animator, storyboard artist, and illustrator, while also being recognized for his lettering. Steve’s first realized movie poster was for Neil Simon’s I Oughta Be In Pictures (1982). He has credited his poster for the 1984 film Lassister as a turning point that led to more assignments from major Hollywood studios.

Steve has been recognized most recently for his extensive and very visible work on Quentin Tarantino’s Hollywood blockbuster, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. He has produced art for Universal, MGM, Disney, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Brothers and has been behind innumerable movie campaigns. Though his designs have less frequently been used as the key art, Steve is recognized for his design and conceptual abilities and is often enlisted early in the process to develop preliminary art. Notable final movie poster credits include Labyrinth (1986), Funny Farm (1988), The Distinguished Gentleman (1992), Super Mario Bros. (1993), Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015), Deadpool 2 (2018). Steve has frequently named his poster art for Tom Selleck’s film Quigley Down Under (1990) as his favorite work.

Though Steve has made his name in the motion pictures industry, packaging art for Texas Instruments games in the early 80s may actually predate his movie work. Steve mostly worked in acrylics and Prismacolor, generally employing a style—particularly in rendering faces—still recognizable as “Chorney” decades later. Educational title Early Reading (1982) not only embodies this look but in doing so features Steve’s daughter Kit, then around 3 years old. In a noticeable stylistic departure, possibly drawing on his animation background, Steve illustrated package art for Football and Video Chess in an exaggerated cartoon style reminiscent of Lou Brooks, rendered in colored inks with cel vinyl overlays. If not for Steve’s own attribution and inclusion on his website, they might have been impossible to identify as his work. 

Steve handled more mainstream, though infrequent, video game box art duties in the 90s and early 2000s. One of his most high-profile video game projects would have been the board game art for Parker Brothers’ Risk, which was subsequently reused for the Sega Genesis release. Steve later worked on numerous projects with Infogrames/Atari, though in many instances his work was preliminary and not incorporated into the final published art, including for Forgotten Realms: Dragon Stone, Sid Meier’s Pirates!: Live the Life, and an Axis and Allies game. VGDensetsu has documented many instances of Steve Chorney’s early stage concept art for Atari.

OVGA has included below Steve Chorney’s full known box art catalog:

1. Teach Yourself Basic (Texas Instruments | TI-99/4A | 1980)
2. Adventure (Texas Instruments | TI-99/4A | 1981) attributed
3. Early Reading (Texas Instruments | TI-99/4A | 1982)
4. Football (Texas Instruments | TI-99/4A - 1982) presumed second release
5. Reading On (Texas Instruments | TI-99/4A | 1982)
6. Video Chess (Texas Instruments | TI-99/4A | 1982) second release with updated box art
7. Return to Pirate’s Isle (Texas Instruments | TI-99/4A | 1983) attributed
8. Risk (Parker Brothers | Genesis | 1994)
9. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Echoes from the Past (Sega | Genesis | 1994)
10. Total Eclipse (Crystal Dynamics | 3DO | 1994)
11. Starwinder: The Ultimate Space Race (Mindscape | Sony PlayStation | 1996)
12. Wargame Construction Set III: Age of Rifles 1846-1905 (Mindscape/SSI | DOS | 1996) attributed
13. Action Man: Raid on Island X (Hasbro | Windows | 1999) very similar to art on Chorney’s website (here)
14. Sid Meier’s Civilization III: Play the World (Infogrames | Windows | 2002)
15. Castles & Catapults: Let the Siege Begin (Infogrames | Windows | 2003) 
16. Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard (Atari | Windows | 2005)
17. Space Quest Collection (Sierra | Windows | 2006)

Note: The TI-99/4A software catalog is poorly documented online. Some of these titles may have had more than one release and the dates above may be inaccurate or fail to align to the release that used Steve Chorney’s artwork.