Tom duBois is an illustrator who created the elaborate paintings used on North American Konami box art and magazine ads from 1988 to 1994. This is his story.

About THE ARTIST

Tom duBois is a true Renaissance man who has done a wide and interesting variety of amazing artwork over his career, some aspects of which are more well known than others.

At age 18, Tom began airbrushing everything from flames and logos, to barbarians, vampires, and armadillo tanks onto vans and motorcycles out of his parent's garage. Tom went on to attend the American Academy of Art in Chicago for three years plus one year of apprenticeship at a large advertising production house in the heart of downtown Chicago.

Tom has done artwork for several brands under big name corporations like Pepsico/Quaker Oats, various General Mills brands, and Nestle brands to name a few (think Betty Crocker, Gatorade, Smucker's jelly grapes, Alpo, etc). He designed stationary backgrounds for animated cereal commercials in the 1980's, and has had art featured on cereal boxes such as Trix. Many of you have most likely come in contact with some form of Tom's art at some point in your life before now and never even realized it!

In 1988 Tom began doing work for Konami and its subsidiary Ultra Games through Michael Meyers ad agency, doing video game box art as well as some ad art. He did airbrush for the Data East logo prior to Konami, and one game box art for Jaleco in 1990 titled MetalMech, but otherwise all video game related work was through Konami until around 1993/1994 when the company switched ad agencies.

Tom - "I don't know if these guys are still around but in the early 90's there were a couple large gift product companies in the Chicago area. Bradford Exchange & Enesco. I got involved developing concepts for their licensed gift lines and one of them was Disney. The Disney work I did put me in a pool of artists that Disney and a publisher, Somerset Fine Art, used and I soon started to develop a series of paintings of their classic films that were going to be distributed as Limited Edition prints. I think they picked me for the project because they noticed the fantasy-type art I did on the video games.

"This worked out well enough that Somerset asked me if I would develop another series of images unrelated to Disney that would depict biblical themes. After the success of the first image I did I decided to move to Houston in 1999 to be closer to the publisher in the hope that they would help me put some of these epic-type paintings together. This project was really good for me for a few years but the Limited Edition print industry started to fade out.

"I then managed to get by doing portraits and odd illustration jobs around town. One of the bigger projects that came along was designing some pirate posters for a theme park and fifty large decorative paintings for a hotel/casino some rich guy in Houston owned in Atlantic City." - quotes from Tom's BOX=ART interview in 2016.

Tom eventually moved back to the Chicago area around late 2015 and is doing work for a Christian magazine called Good News Christian Journal. He currently takes care of his elderly parents and is still illustrating in his spare time. He is a colon cancer survivor as well; which, according to Tommy's father, was a cancer that was ultimately caused by ingesting chemicals from licking the tips of his paint brushes for that extra fine point.

Upon researching Tom (prior to actually meeting him), it is evident that his work really touches people in a special way, no matter what type of art he happens to be doing at the time. Tom's use of color and perspective is uniquely distinctive throughout his work. We are truly blessed to represent Tom.

Don’t forget to check out Tom’s art portfolio. We've included a few interesting articles about Tom for your enjoyment, including the interview mentioned earlier. Be sure to check out the My Life in Gaming documentary about Tom, released on YouTube January 16, 2019.