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Culture
26 Terrific Pieces of Halo 4 Concept & Promotional Art
OK, so this should be the last batch of art from Halo 4 we showcase here on Fine Art. Hopefully. Maybe. While we’ve done a lot over the past few weeks, it’s hard to resist when the artists involved keep sharing their work, and that work keeps being some of the best you’ll see in…
By Luke Plunkett Published December 14, 2012 -
Culture
Paying Tribute to Some Movie Stars (And Vampires)
Joshua Black is a concept artist who has worked on games like the adaptations of Toy Story 3 and Cars 2 In the gallery above you’ll see a selection of his work, both professional and personal. If you like what you see, you can find more at his personal page and CGHub site
By Luke Plunkett Published December 13, 2012 -
Culture
It’s Surprising How Much Art Goes Into Making Halo’s Multiplayer Maps
You normally associate great concept art with the act of building a world and its characters. You know, singleplayer stuff. But a shooter’s multiplayer maps still need to be designed and dreamt up, and in cases like this the art can be just as stunning. The pieces you’re about to see are by Michael Pedro,…
By Luke Plunkett Published December 12, 2012 -
Culture
Halo 4’s Environments Can Be As Beautiful As They Are Brutal
We featured some of Thomas Scholes’ art back in August, but that was before he could show off all the work he did for Halo 4 Now he can. It’s incredible. I mean, not only is there beautiful art here, but he even made gifs of some of it You can check out more of…
By Luke Plunkett Published December 11, 2012 -
Culture
The Week in Games: Hibernation Begins
Fresh off its big evening in Los Angeles on Friday, The Walking Dead gets a retail release on Tuesday. It’s joined by free-to-play indie mecha title Hawken, downloadable content for Dishonored, and not much else as the games publishing business takes its customary extended holiday. Tuesday • The Walking Dead (PS3, 360) • 007 Legends…
By Owen Good Published December 9, 2012 -
Culture
Sunday Comics: Unlikely Hero
Welcome to your Sunday read of the week’s best in web comics. Make sure to click on the expand button in the bottom right to enlarge each comic. We’ve also got a vote coming up on making over the comics page. Look for news on that in an hour. Brawl In The Family by Matthew…
By Owen Good Published December 9, 2012 -
CultureWatch This Speed Run Take Down Dark Souls in 32 Minutes
From Software’s sequel will be remembered as one of the hardest games of this console generation. It took some people weeks—months, even—to make their way to the final battle of Dark Souls. This ruthless speedrun by Freddy ‘Thanatos’ Vasquez blows through it in about half an hour. There’s some skipping but it’s still a hypnotic…
By Evan Narcisse Published December 7, 2012 -
Culture
Crippled By Disease, This Artist Found a Way to Keep Drawing
Francis Tsai is an artist who has worked in comics, film, gaming (tabletop and card) and video games, for clients like EA, Rockstar, DC Comics, Eidos and Marvel. Widely-published, awarded and respected within the field, he’s one of the most talented artists going around. Sadly, Francis was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease in 2010, a…
By Luke Plunkett Published December 7, 2012 -
Culture
Halo 4 is a Lot of Things, But Beautiful? Sure, Why Not
A.J. Trahan is an artist we’ve featured here before, at least partially, for his work on Epic Mickey. But the stuff we’re going to look at today is a little grander in scale. Trahan was one of the 117,342 artists who worked on Halo 4, but in addition to his contributions to Microsoft’s latest blockbuster,…
By Luke Plunkett Published December 5, 2012 -
Culture
Boy, Dead Space Sure Looks Different
You play both Dead Space games at a time when the world has already gone to shit. Just about everyone’s dead, and the place is a mess. But in designing the world of Dead Space, it was handy to see what things were like before the bad stuff went down, when people were breathing and…
By Luke Plunkett Published December 4, 2012 -
Culture
Sunday Comics Needs New Strips. Give Us the Names of Some Good Prospects.
It’s been a year since we added a new comic to our Sunday Comics lineup, and as we are down to nine features, when we usually published 10, and some others have been updating inconsistently, it’s as good a time as any to roll out the Sunday Comics Deathmatch overhaul that we last ran in…
By Owen Good Published December 2, 2012 -
Culture
The Week in Games: Cry For Release
The release calendar perks up this week before its customary winter hibernation. Far Cry 3 is out for consoles and PC. The Mass Effect Trilogy is available on PS3 (correction: it’s already out on 360), and there’s the Dragonborn DLC for Skyrim on Xbox 360. Monday • Waking Mars (PC) Tuesday • Guardians of Middle-earth…
By Owen Good Published December 2, 2012 -
Culture
Sunday Comics: Everything We Offer
Welcome to your Sunday read of the week’s best in web comics. Make sure to click on the expand button in the bottom right to enlarge each comic. Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik published Nov. 26.—Read more of Penny Arcade Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich published Nov. 26.—Read more of Awkward Zombie…
By Owen Good Published December 2, 2012 -
Culture
This Week in the Business: ‘Wii U’s Fisher-Price Take on Tech Seems a Bit Desperate.’
What’s happened in the business of video games this past week … QUOTE | “Wii U’s Fisher-Price take on tech seems a bit desperate.”—Rob Fahey, former editor of GamesIndustry.biz, talking about the Wii U and how no one knows if it will ultimately succeed or fail QUOTE | “It’s good, but it’s not great. And…
By Steve Peterson Published December 1, 2012 -
Culture
Now That is One Good-Looking Future Ship
Long Ouyang is a concept artist who works at WETA, they of The Hobbit, District 9 and Lord of the Rings fame. He’s previously done some game work, including iOS titles. Anyway, today is a good day to show off his stuff, because chances are you saw some of it earlier this week. Where? In…
By Luke Plunkett Published November 30, 2012 -
Culture
I Think This is What Hobbiton Would Look Like in the Distant Future
Jason Stokes is an artist who worked for Guild Wars developers ArenaNet for nearly a decade, contributing to both games in the MMO series. He now owns and teaches at Futurepoly, a digital arts school that specifically targets the video game industry. If you want to see more of Jason’s amazing work, you can check…
By Luke Plunkett Published November 29, 2012 -
Culture
Hope Your Eyeballs Are Ready For This Explosion of Art
If you’re a fan of Roger Dean, 70s sci-fi, old rock n roll posters or just awesome concept art, Pascal Blanché’s work should be just about the best thing you see today. The former art director on Runescape, for which we’ve featured his work before, Blanché is now back at Ubisoft Montreal, a studio he’s…
By Luke Plunkett Published November 28, 2012 -
CultureTotal Recall
24,000 Games, From 1975 to 2012, Broken Down By Genre & Platform
These two charts turned up today, reportedly from a “recently scraped database of 24,000 videogames to determine percentages of genre and platform releases since 1975”. My inner stats nerd just fainted. Charts like this can tell you a lot about games and the changing way we enjoy them, and even allowing for the fact it…
By Luke Plunkett Published November 27, 2012 -
Culture
The Artistic Origins of Disney’s Video Game Love Letters
Disney’s Wreck-it-Ralph is, in some ways, the best video game movie ever made. It doesn’t do as much with the whole video games thing as it could have, but still, great movie. One of the things it did really well was parody/pay homage to famous video game series and clichés without (usually) having to directly…
By Luke Plunkett Published November 27, 2012