Those among us who have followed the development blog may recall the time when we put out a call for artists, aptly titled, “Calling All Artists”. We didn’t specify why we were looking for artists, but in the coming weeks you’re going to see why we did and what the artists who responded created in the form of fan art.

Continuing towards Cave Story’s March 22nd (2010) launch we’re going to be showing some of this fantastic artwork and while asking these very talented artists questions about themselves and how they created these works.

Next up is Cory Godbey originally from Greenville, South Carolina, but now a resident of Greenville, South Caorlina--see what I did there? When he's not busy painting epic Cave Story paintings, he works as an illustrator and animator for Portland Studios. With a decidedly fairy tale look, Cory's art belongs in children's books. You may already recognize his name from the uber-clever bit and run series.

How did you get involved in art?
A story I’ve told a few times is that when I was in kindergarten we had a little project where we had to draw what we wanted to be when we grew up. I had no idea what I wanted so I just started drawing. I ended up drawing a policeman with one of those old hats, the ones with the badge on the front.

I distinctly remember setting my pencil down and thinking, “Man, that’s a good looking hat!” After that my abiding memory of school was doodling in my books, looking up, not knowing what was going on, and then getting back to doodling. I never played sports much or anything like that, I just liked to draw.

What are your tools of the trade?
Most of my work is watercolor and gouache, though I've been getting into more oils in my free time. And while most of it begins with traditional media when I know I'm going to be heavy into the post-production digital, I tend to paint the watercolor fast and loose and go for values and correct warmness or coolness of color. I work on a Mac with Adobe Photoshop and use a Wacom tablet.

What kind of advice can you offer someone interested in getting involved with artwork and digital media?
For me I just worked with it until I found a method that worked for me. A lot of artists post progress stages on their blogs (myself included) and that's a great place to start figuring it out.

What is your experience with Cave Story? How did you learn about it?
Truthfully, (I hope this doesn't get me banned) I had not heard of the game before the WiiWare announcement. I instantly loved the characters though so I wanted to do something for it. I mentioned it to a friend and he pulled up the game on his PC and really introduced me to it.

Tell us about your choice for these paintings, you did a couple from a very iconic scene.
Right, I wanted to make one, an iconic character piece for the main character and second, I wanted to do a scene from the game. I like to see 8-bit/16-bit games reinterpreted in a more realized way (as evidenced by my "bit and run" series of webcomics). Also, I love to paint clouds and smoke, fog, you know, and both of these seemed to offer me that chance. Plus, I love to draw monsters so the dragon was a bonus for me.

How long did it take you to put each together?
Probably an afternoon/evening, each.

Maybe you can also give us some insight on how you started on the paintings and how you ended up with the final pieces.
Unfortunately I'm not sure I still have the layered files. For an insight in to my typical process you can see the stages of production I usually go through with this piece, it's pretty representative : The Death and Life of the Beast.

What's your latest painting?
My most recent piece was a watercolor for an Alice in Wonderland inspired show at Gallery Nucleus.

Where can people find your work?
Over at my bloodspot, I update regularly on a M/W/F schedule.