There’s a great deal of fascinating technology in Jules Verne’s work, not only Nemo’s remarkable submarine itself, the Nautilus, but also the diving suits the crew use for underwater exploration and the weapons they use.

The above image was inspired by my upbringing on industrial Teesside, my comprehensive school would task us with painting the furnaces. From a picture reference, obviously. It would look something like this:

The above still is an image I’ve borrowed from a Brunswickfilms video of the British Steel plant in Redcar, Teesside in 1984, about the time I would have been drawing it in class.

However the book and my game is set in 1867, so there are still traditional weapons around, making for a fun mix for the player to collect. So we have naval swords and pistols.

And we have laser guns of various types. These began as always as pen and ink drawings. I use the cheapest paper and the cheapest pens to create these pictures.

They’re drawn for my benefit and I like to get as many ideas down as I can as quickly as I can so they don’t escape me.

Then I fire up my trusty mac and open the Adobe Illustrator app and start turning my hasty sketches into something professional looking.

I’ve loved drawing laser weapons since I first saw Star Wars, so this was one of my favourite parts of creating the world of Nemo’s Fury.

I also had great fun drawing the Mekoids, the robots that populate parts of the adventure. They began life like this:

And I also started drawing them in circles to represent the porthole the player sees the game through.

As always my drawing and design is inspired by the galaxy’s greatest comic, 2000AD. In this instance by the awesome talent of the genius Mike McMahon, from the ABC Warriors series, written by Pat Mills.