American artist Mick McGinty, who created illustrations for video games including Street Fighter II and Streets of Rage 2 and 3 and Leisure Suity Larry, has died of cancer at the age of 69, his son Jobey McGinty announced. Other cult titles he illustrated include Shining Force and Kid Chameleon.

He passed away “peacefully” on September 18, his son Jobey announced in a post. Although he worked in a variety of fields over decades, most people will know him for his contributions to video games, as McGinty created illustrations for many iconic cover and promotional graphics.

“My dad was an incredible artist, as everyone knows,” he wrote on the website of the charity Caring Bridge. He always said he needed another lesson to improve his painting.”

“Outrageous realism”

Mick McGinty told the website Polygon in 2014 that he was “accidentally” given the opportunity to create the cover art for the western editions of Street Fighter II. “I wasn’t really a hyper-realist painter, but I was capable of ‘outrageous realism’. I was able to bring an American perspective to these characters and their actions,” he said, adding:

“The first thing they realised was that they could never sell these games if they had the original covers – which, by the way, I didn’t like at the time. Everything I saw seemed too far away. Twenty, thirty years later, I still like what they did (…) and I don’t think that the American public today has any problem with those original illustrations.”

Mick McGinty has not devoted his entire career to video games. As his website reveals, he also did a lot of portraits and landscapes, as well as movie posters, including for The Curse of the Pink Panther.

Source : Kotaku