On Exhibit
Concept artists may currently exist in the shadowy areas of the games industry, but they won’t be hidden away much longer if the people behind the Into the Pixel art exhibition have anything to say about it.
The annual exhibition, now in its fourth year, boasts of being the world’s only juried exhibition that combines fine art and interactive entertainment. This year’s collection, announced in late June and unveiled at the recent E3 Media & Business Summit, includes 16 pieces of game art chosen from a field of more than 260 submissions. The popular exhibition will make an appearance at the E for All Expo, Oct. 18-21 in Los Angeles.
The creations of Lee, McCarthy and Stevenson will be among the 16 pieces unveiled at the October event, and available to view online now—in particular, Lee’s “In the Rain” from Dawn of War, McCarthy’s “Gravekeeper’s Lab” from Fable 2 and Stevenson’s “Pinata Cascade” from Viva Pinata.
There’s a story behind each of those works, of course.
“Sometimes (when the process begins) there is a story already in place and other times there is just a tiny bit of gameplay, which was the case with Viva Piñata,” Stevenson says. “I was given free rein to create the world, so I dug deep, absorbed myself into my drawing and came up with the Piñata idea, which really fueled the project.
“As the only concept artist working on the game, it turned into an obsession and I designed every visual aspect of the Piñata universe—down to the pebbles and twigs,” he adds. “Normally I would create the style, design the elements for a game and, once that was completed, would move on. With Piñata, though, I stayed to end to get the coherent look” seen in the final product.
Stevenson says players are “walking through a world that exists in my head” when they play Viva Piñata, a common result of his efforts, it seems. “As a concept artist I get the fun job of being involved right at the start to shape the world,” he says. “I get to imagine creations that would be impossible to produce in the real world, but in the unique medium of games people can walk through them and experience a universe that lives in my head.”
A similar process occurs at Lionhead before McCarthy’s creative juices are flowing freely, the lifelong artist says. For starters, McCarthy receives “a brief outline of what is needed, be it characters or environment, from either the designers or our lead artists.”
The team “will have a chat and throw around some basic ideas, then I go off and sketch out some rough images,” he adds. “Once we have a few down, we have another chat to decide what everyone likes or dislikes, and from there I produce a couple of finished images.”
In the case of “Gravekeeper’s Lab,” the piece “grew out of a character idea that was being talked about for the game,” McCarthy shares. “As is the nature of things, the idea soon morphed into something else entirely, but I found I was left with this dark little image of a strange guy working away by lamplight.
“I worked on it over a few spare hours I had, but really couldn’t seem to finish it satisfactorily,” he adds. That’s when McCarthy saw the piece from a different perspective. “He seemed to be gaping straight at the viewer, like he had been interrupted, so I put in the window frame and it somehow gave the image a little more cohesion.”
The tale behind Lee’s Dawn of War artwork has a similar storybook ring to it. The game was finished around the holidays, Lee remembers, and while wrapping up his part of the project he was “encouraged to add my personal ideas and atmosphere” to one of his final drawings.
“I only had three days left to be finished with all of my work for the year,” Lee recalls. As he started working on the piece that eventually was chosen for the Into the Pixel exhibition, he “thought about the company and the great achievements of the past year.”
He also thought about his colleagues, some of whom had left for vacation and some of whom had left seeking new opportunities. “Suddenly, I came up with an image that was dedicated to all of them,” Lee shares. “On behalf of all of my team members, I created an image of a warrior who just completed his mission at war. He won, but it was more like survival than victory. His heart was broken because of people who were lost and sacrificed.”
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