After our recent post concerning Steve Meister's note on Craig Mullins' work, Craig Mullins himself stopped by to inform us further:<blockquote>Wow, I am amazed people are looking at these images so closely. At some point Bethesda may release better versions? These seem to be jpeg'd very heavily..
I would have to go back and look through what Bethesda sent me on this job, but as I remember most of the source materials on Stripmall were provided by Bethesda. I was not familiar with the Fallout universe and had trouble "getting it" at first. The capitol was painted on top of a 3-d block model.
This is commercial art, made to illustrate an idea. It is not fine art, nor is it an exposition on my abilities as delineator. Whether or not I could paint some of these objects from scratch is not relevant. What is relevant is it would take more time to do so, and that time could be spent toward the end goal of illustrating an idea or feeling.
The most difficult aspect of repainting from a different angle is the complexity of these objects and scenes. There is a LOT of stuff in there. Constructing them in perspective is very time consuming. The majority of these images are constructed, however.
I prefer not to use photos like this, but I solve the clients problem faster, easier, and cheaper this way. The current method of working in concept/digital mattes is 3-d/photo composites with varying amounts of paint. It has been trending this way for the past few years, and it is very obvious when this technique is used, for better or worse. There is no intent to deceive or misrepresent. If this lessens your respect for work done this way, I completely understand and partially agree. But if I don't use these powerful tools, I will be at a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace. I do ask clients if they would allow a more "painted" look and the answer is almost always no. Maybe if I was a better painter the answer would be different.
Given the purpose of concept art there is little reason to reconstruct things that already exist, other than my (or a minority of others) preference, or an artistic machismo. This makes things more expensive for all involved. The time saved can be put into areas that do have to be constructed, which is the great majority most of the time.</blockquote>Note that Pete Hines has indeed promised to release higher quality versions:<blockquote>I have asked this before and I will again, please give us higher res version of these arts, please!
We will definitely do that. I promise. Just not right now.</blockquote>In any case, this should clear up the last bits of doubt that we can't really analyse much about the game from the images. On one positive note: the fact that Bethesda provided most materials for the stripmall before the release of Oblivion means they had a fairly good grasp of 50s googie back then. Now only for some art deco...
I would have to go back and look through what Bethesda sent me on this job, but as I remember most of the source materials on Stripmall were provided by Bethesda. I was not familiar with the Fallout universe and had trouble "getting it" at first. The capitol was painted on top of a 3-d block model.
This is commercial art, made to illustrate an idea. It is not fine art, nor is it an exposition on my abilities as delineator. Whether or not I could paint some of these objects from scratch is not relevant. What is relevant is it would take more time to do so, and that time could be spent toward the end goal of illustrating an idea or feeling.
The most difficult aspect of repainting from a different angle is the complexity of these objects and scenes. There is a LOT of stuff in there. Constructing them in perspective is very time consuming. The majority of these images are constructed, however.
I prefer not to use photos like this, but I solve the clients problem faster, easier, and cheaper this way. The current method of working in concept/digital mattes is 3-d/photo composites with varying amounts of paint. It has been trending this way for the past few years, and it is very obvious when this technique is used, for better or worse. There is no intent to deceive or misrepresent. If this lessens your respect for work done this way, I completely understand and partially agree. But if I don't use these powerful tools, I will be at a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace. I do ask clients if they would allow a more "painted" look and the answer is almost always no. Maybe if I was a better painter the answer would be different.
Given the purpose of concept art there is little reason to reconstruct things that already exist, other than my (or a minority of others) preference, or an artistic machismo. This makes things more expensive for all involved. The time saved can be put into areas that do have to be constructed, which is the great majority most of the time.</blockquote>Note that Pete Hines has indeed promised to release higher quality versions:<blockquote>I have asked this before and I will again, please give us higher res version of these arts, please!
We will definitely do that. I promise. Just not right now.</blockquote>In any case, this should clear up the last bits of doubt that we can't really analyse much about the game from the images. On one positive note: the fact that Bethesda provided most materials for the stripmall before the release of Oblivion means they had a fairly good grasp of 50s googie back then. Now only for some art deco...
