Adam Smasher, Jackie Welles, and V — Behind the Art of Cyberpunk TCG

Cyberpunk Trading Card Game is now available worldwide, and with more players than ever beginning to open packs, play games, and compete for prizes, it’s worth taking a moment to highlight the art of the game too.

Working with our partner WeirdCo, our approach was to layer stories into our pieces, so for anyone interested in the world of Cyberpunk 2077, there is something within each card to uncover. We truly paid attention to every detail, to best represent our developers, our game, and our players.

And going this deep is incredibly fun. It’s a great way to explore our franchise, and if it gives players something to get excited about, then it’s a win-win. For me, this is the power of illustration — when it evokes emotions. A good illustration should always try to invoke this moment of realization, where it works on the surface level but offers something deeper for those who look closely. And I’ll let our artists explain how we did that in Cyberpunk TCG.

Royce: Psycho on the Edge

Expert Illustrator, Michal Ivan

When creating a piece, I try to get into the world and the minds of these characters. It might seem strange, but that's actually what I love about it. What I usually like to do is play the game in the evenings, so I'm completely immersed in the atmosphere. Then I imagine myself as all of these people.

With Royce, it's all the craziness and the cyberware. You need to showcase him as this mad guy. In Cyberpunk 2077, there’s a story you don’t physically see as the player, where Royce is attacking this other guy, Brick, and we decided to showcase that moment for the first time. When I get into the minds of these guys, you're a bit like an actor. When I draw grimaces, I actually do the grimaces myself. Sometimes it can be really creepy when I'm drawing for the whole day like this, because I’m sitting smiling widely or looking angry. My kids are like, "Dad, are you angry?" And I'm like, "No, I'm just drawing angry." You need to get into the headspace of that.

When you have the smaller card crop, it feels like he’s actually screaming at you too, from the card. It’s an in-your-face feeling. Then you have this skewed angle to show they were fighting, and an atmosphere where you don't really know where's up and where's down. This guy is screaming at you and pushing a gun in your face. So you're kind of the other guy. The viewer becomes an actor too.

Johnny Silverhand: Rocking Renegade

Senior Artist, Danel Valaisis

This illustration shows Johnny near Arasaka Tower, starting a revolution, being a rebel — all very fitting for his character. And it’s almost like he’s at a concert, on stage. The guys in the crowd are screaming “down with Arasaka” and everything, but I also wanted to show the concert vibe, that they’re also having fun.

On the artistic side, the edges of Johnny are blurred. There's this vapour, or sweat, around him. It’s almost as if he’s on fire, burning with energy, to amplify the mood and intensity. Johnny is the focal point, up front in this epic pose, like the Statue of Liberty.

And of course, I put Adam Smasher behind him. It’s before he turned all metal; you can see him rushing toward Johnny, as a small cherry on top, foreshadowing. You can also see a guy wearing a Samurai t-shirt. When we do illustrations, we really try to think a lot about every detail. We don't leave room for random things. Everything has to work together, and there's a huge amount of brainstorming to figure out what works and what doesn't.

The Relic: Experimental Biochip

Senior Illustrator, Łukasz Poller

The idea here was to show the Relic, but not in an in-your-face way. We originally sketched something that was almost an in-game ad of the Relic. The idea was to show the richest people in this world, and what they could do with their wealth. They could drink, have sex, kill, all while changing their shape with this technology. They can still be themselves, but uploaded on a stick that can be put anywhere.

That person is a god, a goddess — that’s what became the main idea behind this illustration. I immediately had the colors in mind. I saw how it should look, how it should glow. This composition of a cold, almost software-like thing, that’s not alive. And this bright red, which is life.

But I created the model to look a little bloated, almost, or woozy. The lips are a little bigger than normal, the eyes are like she just woke up. And this was awesome to me. As if, before you put the mask on, it needs a little space, a moment, to adapt to you.

Jackie Welles: Mama's Favorite

Senior Artist, Danel Valaisis

Jackie is my type of character. He's really chill, but can also be intense. And for me, he and his bike are in unity; they come together in one package. I thought it would be a good idea to portray him in this almost contemplative environment, where he was riding his bike and just stopped for a moment.

I think Jackie is very sensitive. He has this huge dream to make it, with V, to the major leagues. This piece is a portrayal of that mindset — he’s thinking about what he wants, looking up with the city behind him at sunset. For me, it was fitting to show that he's thinking about his dream.

This is my way of portraying these characters. I really like these epic, static illustrations because, in my mind, they never get old; I think they’re quite memorable. And they’re something people can relate to, because we all have these moments when you’re walking through a forest, for example, and you just stop and stand in one place. You listen to the sounds around you, and take it all in — to think, or reflect, or feel.

V: Streetkid

Senior Artist, Olgierd Ciszak

These illustrations are V: Streetkid, so street-level characters dealing with street-level stuff. We wanted to capture the high-tech, low-life feeling of Cyberpunk 2077 — I like this aspect of the cyberpunk genre, personally. I consider it one of the core elements.

This is something that I tried to do here, like in the male V illustration where the spiked-head ganger is being beat up. He has this street punk look, along with the goggles to add this old-school subculture vibe to it.

Since these are two depictions of the same character, there was also a desire to find parallels between the two images — the dirty alleyway setting, V's encounters with relatively small-time gangers, and the overall atmosphere.

Mantis Blades

Expert Illustrator, Ricardo Padierne Silvera

I wanted to showcase the mantis blades in the most iconic and fashionable way, not just with a close-up of the cyberware, but in a storytelling moment. The person standing behind the Maelstrom guy is already cut, but he doesn't know it yet; he’s still shooting. And it happens almost at the same time for the foreground guy.

As a story, I wanted to play with time bending, so people would see the image, and see blood and gore, and think it's cool, but then realize that what’s happening there was happening very fast. And you realize this Maelstrom guy also has a sandevistan.

We’re showcasing speed by context, not by visuals here. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners has another way of doing it, and it’s gorgeous. But I didn’t want to do a very colorful thing, or the repetition of shapes, because I don’t think it would work in such a realistic piece. Instead, we use time, and we use the moment, to show to the viewer that something interesting is happening here. I think that's cool. That's the X factor of the piece.

Johnny Silverhand: Never Stop Fighting

Senior Illustrator, Łukasz Poller

We created a lot of sketches of Johnny in various poses, but I wanted to do something different to a typical hero illustration. Then my lead Michał Dziekan had an idea — we have Johnny Silverhand’s iconic car, so why not use it?

We started developing a story behind it — Johnny with his hand outside the car, smoking, driving through Night City, with some mess behind him. As a viewer you wonder, maybe he caused the mess, or maybe he was just passing by.

But it was a hard perspective to get right, figuring out how to show the car, the guy inside, and also the city. So I actually posed the in-game model and was flying around it, looking for the right angle. Then my kids came in. They're small, three years old, and twins. It was kind of a mess. One was on me, one was on the chair, and they destroyed my place of work. Once I got them out of the room, I saw that the camera was a little bit lower, with this big headlight at the front. And I was like, "Oh wow, this is a great idea!" They had just done a huge amount of the work for me.

Field Operator

Expert Illustrator, Michal Ivan

We wanted to create a storytelling illustration, but in as interesting a way as possible. So we decided to go with this simplified graphical approach, where we see her silhouette compared to the chaos behind her. You have this contrast of energies: she's tough and silent, while there's mayhem happening behind her. It's happening in a club, so it has this hazy, blurry atmosphere. You can see in the beginning images that I drew it very simply, almost like a comic book. For me, it's important to tell the story in a way that you can see it even in these simplified shapes and rough drawings. Sometimes that allows my head to be more playful.

Then you need the storytelling elements. The suffering guy is acting with his hands, and the others are arguing because they're bodyguards and they've failed. You also have their personalities. The one on the right is more of a tough guy, and the other is already crying. He's big, so he's a bodyguard, but he's failed.

The more you work on it, the more you discover what could be happening. You have this story where she's drinking wine that's almost like blood, for example, and then someone is spilling wine in the background. You can keep adding more of these stories, even if not a lot of people will notice. It’s more fun that way when you’re creating it.

Adam Smasher: Ender of Legends

Illustration Team Lead, Michal Dziekan

With “Ender of Legends” as my direction, I wanted to show Smasher in confrontation with a crew, but I didn't want to make it random. So I came up with the idea to place it in a space from Cyberpunk 2077 itself, and refer to a game quest directly.

There's a quest that you get from El Capitan, Baby Let Me Take You. You need to steal an Arasaka truck from the docks, and while things don’t go super smoothly, V gets away safely. So I thought that maybe some copycat of V had an idea: "Okay, he did this, so I'm doing the same. I’ll gain some street cred." He tried to steal the same stuff from the same area, but thanks to V, Arasaka was on alert — Smasher was there to protect the shipment. 

That’s why, in the background of the illustration, you can see the exact area from the game. You can see the truck. And you can see Smasher, with his knife. It’s not particularly noticeable in the game, but he has a knife on his leg, in a sheath. I got this idea that, in this piece, he had already blown up the Quadra, killed the other dude. Now, he's looking at you, and you're looking back from the point of view of another defeated cyberpunk. Smasher is holding this person in his grip, knife at the ready, and saying to you: "Look what will happen in a moment." He's about to cut this person in half.