The Artwork

Art is a big part of the Netrunner story, so it only made sense that I commission some custom artwork for the movie poster, website, etc, and I started that process in spring of 2026. I finally settled on an artist from Brazil who made some Netrunner cards that I personally liked and was pleased to hear that he was excited about the idea of translating my idea of the players making the game into a finished piece.

Introducing artist Matheus Calza

Over the course of several weeks of the summer of 2026 I sent over some creative notes and crude mockups about what embodied the players in the documentary and the message I wished to convey with the film. He promptly sent back sketches and we quickly got into a routine, all over email.

Matheus was great to work with as my written ideas came to life. It didn't take long before we got the characters, actions, positions, and colors agreed upon and started to head towards final files.

When it came time for the players to be interacting with cards, we initially liked the original card backs, but knew we couldn't use them. NSG graciously said we could riff on their designs so I came up with a card back that looks and feels like real back but includes a custom designed logo.

I thoroughly enjoyed working with Matheus and would do it again. It was a really satisfying process to commission art from them. Check out their work on their artstation page or look at their previous netrunner cards.

Thank you, Matheus!

The Layout

The card-themed layout is meant to resemble a netrunner identity card, but I took liberties with the layout to better fit the movie poster and give enough netrunner flavor to interest non-players without (hopefully) confusing them with details.

The numbers in the bottom corners represent the years of the Worlds tournaments at which the documetary was filmed ('18 and '25).

I liked the symbol for the anarch faction so had to use the human fist in the upper right corner.

And the card name of "The Players Make The Game" works on a literal and figurative level — the players literally make the game now, but the players are also what makes the game worth playing.

Finally, the subtitle of "Remarkable Things Through Volunteering" is a riff on a quote from the movie ("People are capable of remarkable things").