Exclusive – Stunning Spider-Man concept art reveals secrets of the Miles Morales game
Swinging behind the scenes of the Spider-Man: Miles Morales game for PS4 and PS5.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales is already one of the best PS5 games that you can play right now, but you could discover a whole new level of appreciation for the game by joining us for a swing behind the scenes.
Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales - The Art of the Game, a beautiful hardback book, is available on Amazon now. The book compiles concept art from the developers at Insomniac Games, chronicling the visual style of the game and how it came together. And today, the publishers from Titan Books have kindly given us permission to share online a handful of images from this eye-catching tome.
Below you'll find some stunning images from the book, which could help tide you over while we all wait patiently for the next game in the series. And if you want to take a closer look, you should be able to right-click on any of the pictures to open them in a new tab.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales concept art revealed
Let's start things off in a meta fashion. The book features a series of sketches that were produced by Insomniac to appear within the actual game. You might recognise them from the cut-scene where Miles designs his new Spidey suit.
Tiny eyes! Big chevron! It looks like Miles got pretty excited while drawing and annotating these designs. Also, did you spot the note from Miles' best buddy in the top right corner?
Next up, Miles takes that chevron idea and runs with it. There's even one sketch on this page that incorporates the flag of Puerto Rico, for a suit idea that looks a bit like Captain America's shield:
It must've been a unique challenge for the artists at Insomniac to draw this in a way that made it look like Miles himself was developing ideas, changing his mind and even crossing some things out.
In this next sketch, with the black and red colouring being settled on, you can see the design that ends up coming to life in the game:
As well as including those sketches which appeared in the game itself, this handy book also contains a multitude of artwork which was produced during the game's development phase. Some of the drawings, like this one below, have a nicely comic-book feel to them:
It's cool to see how far a concept can come, as well. You can go from the comic-like drawing above to the stunning sight below, both of which show Miles using his Venom ability.
There are also some early designs of characters from the game, including this sinister sketch of the villainous Tinkerer:
Speaking of the Tinkerer, this next look at the character is more of a graffiti-style poster, which is pretty cool:
In the following image of Miles taking on the Tinkerer, you can see how the latter-stage concept art ends up looking pretty similar to the game itself:
In another example of concept art really capturing the sense of what the finished game will look and feel like, this next one should take you back to that memorable opening level:
It's brilliant to see just how atmospheric the concept art can be. The image above is a great example of gaming artwork being highly evocative, as is the one below:
Gaming concept art can help the developers flesh out locations, too, as these pictures will set the tone for a place's look and feel. Take this image of the Underground's base, for example:
Lastly, we've got a couple of images that are slightly more off the wall. Or should that be on the wall? Perhaps that would be more fitting, as these detailed murals ended up appearing on walls in the game:
The level of detail that goes into making murals like this really is incredible. They're essentially background details, and you could easily swing right by them without looking, but you can tell that a lot of thought and effort went into the frog above and the manatees below.
And that's your lot! Taking a look at this concept art has given us a deeper understanding of Spider-Man: Miles Morales and an increased level of respect for the artists who work behind the scenes on games.
If you fancy seeing more eye-watering artwork from the development of this web-tastic title, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales - The Art of the Game to available to buy from Amazon now.
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Authors
Rob Leane is the Gaming Editor at Radio Times, overseeing our coverage of the biggest games on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, PC, mobile and VR. Rob works across our website, social media accounts and video channels, as well as producing our weekly gaming newsletter. He has previously worked at Den of Geek, Stealth Optional and Dennis Publishing.