Peek beneath the curtain of a game developer at work and you’ll discover a process that goes unseen: of painters and artists turning a written idea into a workable vision long before anything is animated on screen.
And yet this art – this concept art – typically gets relegated to the deepest depths of a server when the game is finally made. Select pieces might occasionally be offered up in loading screens or as collectible items in the game itself, but rarely are these aspects of the production truly discussed. Arguably no other entertainment medium leaves so much of its pre-production in the vault, never to be seen.
Unexplored brings gaming art to the light. Our artists – Eva Kedves, David Tilton and Dominik Zdenković – have worked on some of the biggest entertainment properties in the world (Black Panther, Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed to name a few). We commissioned each artist to produce three to four sketches of fictional game worlds envisioned by us.
At the same time, we’ve used Unexplored as an opportunity to spotlight places in the world that are typically neglected in videogames. We’ve chosen to move away from typical American cities, Soviet bloc destinations decimated by nuclear fallout, or yet more nondescript South American jungles. Instead, we looked to bring to life far-flung destinations like Ushuaia, Cape Town, Accra, which might be less familiar to gamers.
After all, it couldn’t hurt for a billion-dollar industry to broaden its horizons.
More info: techtalk.currys.co.uk
Cape Town, South Africa
Bruges, Belgium
Guangzhou, China
