Tag: Concept Art

Informational Topographics

[Image: “FOGBAE.TWR4” by Mike Winkelmann, 07.06.15].

Since 2007, artist Mike Winkelmann has been producing an image a day, primarily using Cinema 4D, though all the specific tools differ year by year.

As Winkelmann justifiably boasts on his site, he has been working on the series for 3,030 consecutive days—of course, he also humbly refers to his work as just “a variety of art crap” produced “across a variety of media.”

[Image: “reopot seven-ten” by Mike Winkelmann, 05.04.15].

designboom just ran a quick survey of his work, and I thought I’d just piggyback on that with a few images here.

[Image: “pxil.two” by Mike Winkelmann, 05.12.15].

While I’m deliberately focusing on architectural or landscape-oriented imagery, his work is also strong with abstract technological scenes of circuits, robotized organic forms, abstract sprays of light, abandoned atmospheric-processing towers on floodplains, colossal elevator shafts, microscopic views of disturbed crystal growth, and more.

[Image: “OB TANK” by Mike Winkelmann, 07.26.15].

There are spheres of liquid metal, domed cities emerging from the desert floor, neon patent diagrams for purposeless machines, bristling mineral cliffs resembling dystopian housing blocks, and sublime landscape shots that appear to pull double-duty as bar graphs for otherwise unknown statistics. Informational topographics.

[Image: “FRIED GOBO” by Mike Winkelmann, 07.31.15].

There is even a heavenly super-McDonald’s in the sky, a Mont Saint-McD of the clouds.

[Image: “MCD 2087” by Mike Winkelmann, 08.11.15].

Some, even a few I’ve included here, veer a little overtly in a Star Wars direction, while others look more like future album art. Black pyramids and doubled suns.

[Image: “orangetooth gutrot” by Mike Winkelmann, 11.29.14].

For others—and there are literally thousands of images, all the more impressive for the fact that they’re being produced once a day—check out designboom; for all of them, click through to Winkelmann’s site directly.

[Image: “BOXXX-3VV” by Mike Winkelmann, 07.01.15].

[Spotted by designboom].

A Vast Array of Props

[Image: Thomas Scholes, Sketch a Day series; view larger].

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has posted an interview with artist Thomas Scholes about “how concept art is made.”

Scholes refers to himself as “an environment specialist,” and he describes how he develops the architecture and landscapes for games such as Guild Wars 2, Halo 4, Gigantic, and many others.

[Image: Thomas Scholes, Sketch a Day series; view larger].

One of his many strategies is to develop what RPS calls “a vast array of props”: Scholes, we read, has “constructed huge asset sets from which he can plunder. A previous month-long project of his was to create a vast array of props, which he can now deposit in his images and rework to give a sense of clutter.”

These include architectural motifs—arches, walls, stone monoliths, ruins—that are often just reworked from previous backgrounds. For these, he will “repurpose bits of previous paintings, manipulating their shape to suggest a receding wall, ceiling or floor.”

[Image: Thomas Scholes, Sketch a Day series; view larger].

Scholes recently embarked on a “sketch a day” project that produced the images you see here. The sketches are left rough, or, as RPS suggest, they “resist the instinct to over-define, to steer them away from pedantic perfectionism.”

This often makes his images both impressionistic and painterly, emotive explorations of gothic terrains and environments.

[Image: Thomas Scholes, miscellaneous work; view larger].

Many of these images are frankly gorgeous, including vibrant forest landscapes that would not look out of place in an exhibition of 18th-century landscape painting—or even alongside examples from the Hudson River School or the work of Caspar David Friedrich.

[Image: Thomas Scholes, miscellaneous work; view larger].

These being games, of course, rather than the Rückenfigur of Friedrich, you’ve got cloaked figures peering into hostile and mysterious landscapes, looking not for aesthetic solace but for hidden strategic advantages, ready for combat.

[Images: Thomas Scholes, Oppidum; view larger].

In any case, check out the interview over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun or, even better, click around Scholes’s website for a lot more images like these.

[Image: Thomas Scholes, miscellaneous work; view larger].

[Previously on BLDGBLOG: Game/Space: An Interview with Daniel Dociu].