Thursday, October 19, 2006

Ye Olde Downtown Tulsa

One great pleasure I've discovered about this self-serving blog is finding new things lurking in pieces of old art and memorabilia. Until lately, I seldom took the time to look at this stuff or reflect on my strange little career. I now find myself looking at artwork from old projects in a whole new light.

I managed a team of about 35 people during the development of Kingdoms. I also worked with a half dozen or so external contract artists, most of whom worked on illustrations for the game's cinematic sequences. The contractors varied a lot in their experience level, ranging from veterans with decades of experience (like the aforementioned Greg Call) to fresh young talent, right out of art school.

One of the veteran illustrators was a man named Dale Rutter, a long time instructor at the Art Institute of Seattle. Dale was primarily responsible for painting a panoramic view of the capital for each of the kingdoms in our story. Above is his lovely painting of Lendra, the capital city of Veruna... the side with all the nautical stuff. Upon closer examination, I can't help but think that some of the city seen behind those evocative, ancient battlements has a distinctly modern look.


In fact, I'm sure of it. This looks more like the sort of place you'd find insurance brokers, condos and health clubs than the seat of power for a distant magical land. Dale has a reputation as something of a prankster, so I'm guessing this was intentional.

Good one, Dale. Too bad it took me almost eight years to notice!

CK

5 comments:

Peter said...

Oh, sure. Go ahead and slander poor Dale four years after his gruesome accident in the beef jerky factory. Dale can't even communicate outside of a kind of wet, mewling sound, nevermind defend his honor against your scurrilous, cowardly attacks.

Clayton Kauzlaric said...

Scurrilous? I said it was a good joke, didn't I. For shame, person-whose-name-is-similar-to-a-guy-I-know.

Anonymous said...

I have one question kinda off topic but about Kingdoms.

We have managed to reverse engineer everything except these mysterious .taf files got any hints :)

Also I watch your blog every day thats some cool stuff.

This is Jerry60k I lost my pw :)

Clayton Kauzlaric said...

If the game runs without those files using the +disablecavedogverification shortcut, I may know what those are... Not that it makes much difference, since I'm the last person to ask about programming joy.

Anonymous said...

Second picture does look modern. Heck, I thought it was supposed to be a modern-day city until I read that paragraph.