How do you create a world? Today’s epic fantasy game fabulists embrace that challenge with the passion that fueled Italian Renaissance masters’ portrayals of Classical mythology.
Those astonishing landscapes, atmospheric effects, wicked weapons, sinister creatures, and mega-muscled men and maidens don’t just spring from a graphics program. They start as sketches made by human hands. For a brief time, 150 riveting examples in pencil, pen, ink, marker and digital imaging rock Montgomery College’s School of Art + Design.
Sketch to Screen: The Art of Game Creation lifts the curtain to expose the artistry of animation. It’s a real game — “Rise of Legends,” created in three years by Big Huge Games. Without the nonstop action, viewers can trace the genesis of imagination and sources, from da Vinci to the Arabian Nights to sci-fi, from which inspiration was drawn.
Many of the Timonium company’s employees come from Maryland art schools, suggesting the exhibition’s appeal to SCAD graphic design professor Bob Helsley: It shows how real-world art careers can take wing on flights of fantasy. This isn’t kids’ stuff; he contends that the lucrative video graphics market is a wellspring of legitimate art.
Amid landscapes that evoke 19thcentury Hudson River School painter Frederic Church as much as Tomb Raider, and thumbnails showing how gunships and warriors take shape, Shaun Martin patiently explained the process of creating Alin Kingdom, the setting of “Rise of Legends.” Solo sketching is followed by team brainstorming; for example, the artist’s chosen colors may change when the images are placed into “the world.”
After laboring over countless cels in his first animation classes, Martin recalled his words upon graduating to digital tools: “Thank you, computer!”
“Game creators have to think in 3-D,” Helsley said. It’s a talent rarely acknowledged outside the game industry, although many find recognition and riches when crossing over into film animation. With growing interest and opportunities in game creation, SCAD is sponsoring a presentation for high schoolers on March 15.
The rest of us can marvel how these pre-animated still images pack so much action.
Sketch to Screen
Through March 18
» Venue: School of Art + Design at Montgomery College, 10500 Georgia Ave., Silver Spring
» Info: 301-649-4454; montgomery
college.edu/schoolofartanddesign
