![]() Can you give me a primer into this world and how it works? I notice you (and any contributors) list at that bottom of each photo what lighting/capturing software you use to capture these things. That adds another dimension to taking any screenshot, really. ![]() Most of those hiccups tend to vanish when you’re playing them, but can totally stick out when you’re scrutinizing a still or playing on PC. You might capture a single frame of drama that epitomizes a particular scene, or conversely one that seems at odds with the game, almost making it more human or unexpected.Īlso, games are still not very good at consistency when it comes to things like particle effects, lighting, and texture fidelity. Other shots can be more photographic or painterly in simply noticing strong forms and compositions as you’re flitting about the game. Most games betray these aspirations through their concept art or marketing, so that in itself can be a target. So, you make Skyrim look like Frazetta’s Conan, perhaps, or a driving game look like a supercar brochure. A lot of games seem to wish they were something else, and it’s usually one of the established art forms that inspire people in the industry, or its consumers. One way to see it is that I’m trying to capture what the game secretly, or sometimes quite obviously, wants to be. ![]() You take a moving, complicated art form and turn it into a single still frame that represents something completely different. I have this disastrous curiosity, which means I spend far too long trying to do things just to see if they can be done, usually at the expense of earning money. I did software engineering at university and come from that Britsoft background of exploring rather than using technology, so making code do things it’s not strictly meant to is an addiction. In that sense, it’s really only half about things analogous to photography, and the other half is engineering. That alone should tell you how different a discipline it is, and how separate the experience it requires. I had - and have - no photography background at all. It surprised me that no one else took it seriously, so I figured I’d better get on with it.ĭid you have a photography background or did you find your footing in this medium? It was also very obvious that there was more art in many games than players cared to look at during gameplay, so there was value to it. ![]() I found that more rewarding, challenging, and unpredictable than the gameplay itself. When I went freelance in about 2008 - which is when I effectively started Dead End Thrills - I was already pretty much playing games exclusively to take pictures. We were also perhaps the first print magazine to switch to 16:9 when it was tentatively introduced on Xbox, so you can see the pieces coming into place. I remember the review code for one particular game, Rebellion’s Rogue Trooper, being effectively a QA build, which is where I first encountered this idea of a free camera, timescale control, etc. This was also a time when software and hardware started closing the gap between real time and traditional artwork, which gave you another, unspoken goal for the screenshots. It was, therefore, a sizable part of our job to present these games in a way that illustrated our text while giving readers something pretty to look at. Magazines nowadays tend to accept publisher screenshots, but that wasn’t acceptable back then, mostly for practical reasons. I worked for a game magazine, Edge, for several years after 2005, and taking screenshots was part of the job of reviewing games. Where did you come from? Where did it come from? Give me a bit of background about you and the site. I tracked down site curator Duncan Harris and got to ask him about where DET comes from and how he makes video games look like they belong in the Louvre. ![]() The detail work also shows an appreciation for creators in this field whose work would never be seen otherwise, and that appreciation shouldn’t go unrewarded. I thought DET’s importance was perhaps best exemplified here, because it found a way to present budget titles as capital-A Art. Not only were there small, detailed shots that highlight the minutiae within game worlds that most players will never stop to notice, but also there were also whole galleries of awe-inspiring work that had been culled from the kinds of games I’d passed over because they’d been critically panned. As someone who has has spent way too much money on books that collected art from games, it was like Christmas morning to stumble across DET. When I first found the site, I was stunned as to how the artist had taken small, hyper-specific moments from games I’d played and arranged them so stunningly. If you love games, you’ve probably crossed paths with Dead End Thrills, a niche website dedicated to capturing single frames of video games in beautiful, overwhelming quality. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |