I am a designer, not an artist. Back when I was planning Chef's Choice as a physical card game, I didn't have to worry too much about graphics and illustrations. I would have fine-tuned the game using placeholder art during playtesting and then pitched the idea to a publisher. If I had been successful, they would have either found an artist for me or handled it in-house. But with the shift to a digital format, I suddenly faced the challenge of providing high-quality visuals right from the start.

But how do you find the right artists?

In February 2026, I applied for the "Gamecity Hamburg video game funding" (but that's a story for another time). In short: With a bit of luck, the city of Hamburg awards grants to budding game developers to help them bring their projects to life. One important condition: the people involved should ideally be based in Hamburg.

So, how do I find artists in Hamburg?

It might sound easy on paper. After all, the city has about 2 million residents, and neighborhoods like the "Schanzenviertel" are known as artistic strongholds. So, did I walk around and visit some studios? Of course not—I'm a software engineer, and let’s just say I’m a bit socially shy ;) Two colleagues recommended checking the Instagram pages of the three major Hamburg art and design universities to find an illustrator. There are hundreds of posts there from students and aspiring illustrators. My girlfriend suggested simply posting an "I’m looking for an illustrator" ad on "Kleinanzeigen" (for international readers: think of it as "Facebook Marketplace"). And even though I saw plenty of promising work and styles on the university pages, I decided to give the ad idea a chance. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my relationship, it’s this: trust your girlfriend’s ideas.

So, I posted the ad.

After four hours, the ad had barely 12 views and zero responses. After about ten hours, the first inquiry came in. The problem was, the person wasn't based in Hamburg and had no real experience as a professional illustrator. A few hours later, a second inquiry arrived. Honestly, I was already about to give up because the ad only had about 20 views, and I had no idea what to expect.

A Perfect Match

The second inquiry was from Johannes Lott, a professional illustrator from Hamburg who had already created illustrations for several board games AND had experience in the video game industry. His portfolio was perfect and essentially covered every art style I could imagine for my game. I knew immediately that I had found the perfect partner.

We agreed that he would create a sample illustration so we could get on the same page and he could estimate if he could realistically produce the roughly 200 images needed for the game. Ironically, at this point, I was the bottleneck, as I wasn't entirely sure which direction the art style should go. At first, I wanted a very "mature," non-cartoonish style:

Then I realized that this approach would make the game lose its intended video game charm. After all, I had known from the start that at least one of the chefs had to be an animal (the Cooker (Cocker) Spaniel). He also kept asking me questions that I hadn't even thought about before. So, Johannes started over and worked with strong lineart:

I could picture this much better, but there was still a missing "final touch" that I couldn't quite put into words. That didn’t matter, though, because Johannes nailed it on his own:

And that is how the art style for Chef's Choice was born.