Hitting the books

I immediately started to research games concept art with a focus on environments, what quickly became apparent was that the large majority of concept art that is available to view, is not the early sketch work but rather the finished painted pieces such as this picture from EA's 'Dante's Inferno'.

This is understandable as most game companies and indeed games designers only want to showcase their best works, however it did not help me find many examples of the development of environments. Many of the books I researched on the topic such as... "Art of Darksiders" were also very sparse when it came to showcasing pictures of very early concept art.

There were also far more 'Art of..." books based on films that showed the art development than there were on digital games.

I collated as many of these as I could and began to look at how the professionals designed their environments.

The best of these were...

The Art of District 9 - Falconer, D (2009)

The Art of Darksiders - Madureira, J (2010)

The Art of Star Wars: Episode III - Rinzler, J.W (2005)

Behind the Mask of Spider-Man - Cotta Vaz, M (2002)

The Art of X2 - Shaner, T (2003)

The Art of Midway - Zucker, F (2007)