Wanna hear something really funny.

I just found the absolute best quality scans I've ever encountered for the Skyrim art book.

Wanna guess how I found it

Take this image an do a reverse google image search

Guess where it shows up?

You guessed it. A Hentai website.

That website has every page of the Skyrim art book scanned in incredible quality. God bless the archivists on the Hentai websites.

Who knew how invaluable they would prove to the preservation of Skyrim concept art.

Fallout 3: Centaur Martini

Pictured: Concept art by Adam Adamowicz depicting a Centaur in a suit and glasses muttering for a martini being held by its tongue.

Moira Brown expresses interest in trying to communicate with Centaurs. You can read about Centaurs here:

https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Centaur

Since it is the birthday of one of my beloved artists, a sole concept artist behind Fallout 3 and one of the two behind Skyrim and many many more games, Adam Adamowicz, I'd like to encourage you all to look at the massive archive of his work over here:

His imagination and visible willingness to experiment was out of this world, Adam, your legacy lives on.

TES V: Skyrim concept art

Art by Adam Adamowicz, my faves from the public archive on flickr

all of Adam Adamowicz's concept art is lovely but with shivering isles stuff in particular you can just see his pure creativity, talent, and enthusiasm for world building. there’s very little sense of restraint there it seems like he really went full out and had a good time. i'm really glad we have access to this collection, there’s so much to admire in his pages

The men in black

Vol 2 #1 1991

Un lobo en el rebaño

Aircel Comics

An Inspiration

Mila, our on campus art news blogger, takes inspiration from many places including video game art. One of her favorite artists is Adam Adamowicz, a concept artist, who's art she explores in more depth here in "An Inspiration" #MarywoodArt #Animation

Video games are undeniably a form of art, each offering visuals, soundtracks, and a variety of elements, often to share a story or just an enjoyable experience for the player. The beauty of game art can be found in style. Each game has very distinct stylistic choices that expressively convey the game’s concept through visuals. To this day, my main inspiration in this industry is Adam Adamowicz.…

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every time i think about the possibility of elder-scrolls stranger things parallels i know im reaching 99% of the time and its just similar themes in both series but... staring at the daggerfall cover art vs henry’s clawed hand 

Pictured: A baliwog swimming, by Adam Adamowicz.

What are your inspirations for drawing? Like other artists or things

I'll start with my biggest inspiration, which got me into art as a whole: Adam Adamowicz. I got introduced to him through Skyrim concept art, but I honestly think his Shivering Isles concepts are some of the best concept art out there. You can see how much he just takes an idea and completely sores with it. A torrential stream of beautiful sketchy goodness.

I love Oblivion's flat ass dough faces and early Xbox 360 charm, but this shit is simply crazy. Look at this, it makes you wish to dedicate your life to bringing this to life, as all good concept art should. It inspires more of itself.

I could post all the images there are out there, because I sincerely think this is the type of work that has stuck with me the most. It's something to strive for. You can see it for yourself instead. That was what got me started. After that, and through my journey on Tumblr and Twitter, I think what stuck to me the most was the art done by small artists, my "compatriots". The things you don't see. There is so much love in little things, and maybe in another universe there are entire cultures dedicated to them. I wish we had time to explore each and every one of the smallest pieces of media, especially narrative media, weird media.

I'll concede that it's a bit of an abstract thing to be inspired by, but once you realise how much work goes into the smallest of things, I believe you'll find inspiration anywhere you go. I think the reason why my Batter drawings are the way they are is my inspiration from just the design of letters and fonts in general. I think making something that blurs the line of symbol and representation over and over is fun.

One artist that has stuck with me is the late great Gunner Leatherwood. He passed away earlier this year. I watched this guy grow from a hundred followers to thousands. I saw his art improve. I think that inspiration transcends just the visual aspect of the art. It's a story, a lived experience, as all art is, but I felt I understood it much more. I think going after and following these small artists pay off because of this. Everyone can make something truly great, and some people have and no one noticed. Many amazing animated movies have been made, but never got to the people who would understand them, who'd have dedicated themselves to easing other people into it. We like to think we understand media in a completely intuitive, isolated fashion, but it's not true at all. Our shared experience contributes to classics being recognised and loved. Sometimes you need the right person at the right time to understand. Gunner was a great artist because of how intuitive and visceral his drawings were. It was like he was drawing from his entire life experience to express himself in a page. At first he had little control of it, but with time it was molded and polished so that the madness was discernable, but not gone from the drawing. His mindset for drawing was fun, and he too was always going after small artists of all kinds.

But going back to Batter drawings and abstraction, an artist that has also inspired me over the years in that aspect of bluring symbol and representation into one solid thing, and similarly started somewhat small like Gunner, is Matt Lesniewski. His hatching is out of this world, and his character design is evocative and never boring. The characters are huge balls of symbols made into physical objects. Recently he straight-up draws the belts of characters floating. It's wonderful.

Another artist that does this bluring very well, and is very inspiring, is nailgun waowao. They really, well, nail the appeal of making images that have all the defining elements of a certain scene or character, but open closer look they are fragmented and completely abstracted. It's like a bigger image overlayed with many smaller stories and symbols.

But to go back to talking about active inspirations that came before, and got to me to where I am at the moment, it's a bit harder. I can't really make it sound smart besides going "uuh I don't know like abstract stuff, cubism idk lol." Just try to appreciate the great things your friends make, and try and work together to make something even greater.

Some of the most improvement I had in art was from learning with friends. Art ultimately is a form of communication, understanding other people and yourself will make you better at it. Technical skill is fun and speaks for itself, but your experiences will reach much deeper. In a world where we can't even begin to compreehend the powers that be, loving and understanding what is close is probably gonna make your life and art much better.

"Decayed Pomp"

concept art for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Shivering Isles DLC

Art by Adam Adamowicz

Fallout 3: Laser & Plasma Concept Art

Pictured: Concept art by Adam Adamowicz of the Laser Rifle, Laser Pistol, Plasma Rifle & Plasma Pistol, created for Fallout 3.

You can check out Adam's concept art for the weapons of Fallout 3 here:

https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Adam_Adamowicz/Portfolio/Weapons

I was playing around with Pen's haircut and then had the absolute bonkers idea to give him the haircut from Adam Adamowicz's Bosmer concept art. I still can't decide if I love it or hate it. ((((( :

Ask time! What era/type of art would you say you draw the most inspiration from?

oh god this is really hard. Mostly because my inspirations are all over the place! One is 2010's webcomics! A very broad category, I know, but I was really into reading comics when I was in highschool, and a lot of amazing ones were coming out around that time. The Meek (Der-shing Helmer), HINABN (Tess Stone), Lackadaisy (Tracy Butler), and anything by Evan Dahm (the artist behind Riceboy/Vattu/etc). I somehow avoided Homestuck, but Prequel Adventure (Kazerad) rewired my little Oblivion-Obsessed brain.

Speaking of Oblivion - the concept art for all three mainline games in the Elder Scrolls series did SO much for my imagination. Adam Adamowicz is one of my all time favorite artists, and I think his work on Oblivion was overlooked because of his (also stellar) work in Skyrim. There's an entire flickr album of his concept art for TES IV, though, and I recommend it! What that man could do with art markers bewilders me even now. I think this might be the single most impactful art influence I have.

The close runner-up would be the aforementioned Evan Dahm's work. I think he's still, years later, criminally underrated in terms of public appreciation and discussion. For me, Rice Boy blew open so many doors regarding art style, presentation, and character design. Vattu then stunned with just how much of an epic it was and it's fantastic titular main character. Now 3rd Voice is perhaps his most technically beautiful comic yet, and seems to meld the weirdness of Rice Boy with Vattu's super gripping character arcs and worldbuilding.

The way his comics are paced (both in story and the literal pacing of how he organizes his panels/the art in them) is my favorite...ever. Even though they're simple, he just gets the framing down so perfectly it's crazy. The fact he can make such alien characters so human in how they act and how we view them astounds me. I really do - no hyperbole or empty flattery intended - think he's a modern day comics master and I need more people to discuss his body of work.

Also all of his comics are FREE to read on his website rice-boy[dot]com! They're also on webtoon if you're already dedicated to that platform, and the blog @riceboycomic was basically a republishing of Rice Boy with added artist commentary. If you're not ready to dive into the behemoth that is Vattu yet (its over 1000 pages, though it's so worth it), 3rd Voice is his newest work and you can catch up to the current page (288) within an hour. Rice Boy is also pretty short, under 500 pages. Please do yourself a favor and get lost in one of the quiet, uncanny, heartfelt worlds he's created (and then talk to me about it pleaaaseee).

From Adam Adamowicz's Mirelurk concept art

"Although he worked in the farthest, darkest corner of Bethesda Softworks, Adam’s influence stretched across the length and breadth of the studio." "It was Adam who taught me that characters were more affecting with unexpected nuance: the horrifying is more horrible when infused with comedy; the disgusting all the more stomach-churning when mixed with beauty." "When designing an original gun, for instance, Adam didn’t focus his research on the study of other guns, but on tesla coils, industrial power tools, or lab equipment." "As I worked to translate Adam’s concepts into three-dimensional models, I showed him my works-in-progress. I wanted his artistic feedback, of course, but mostly, I wanted his approval. His responses surprised me. He was always positive and brimming with nice things to say, and yet I wasn’t always certain he loved what I had done. That bothered me at first, but as the years went by, I came to understand that it was not so much the faithful reproduction of his work that moved Adam, but my riffing on his idea." "If he could see that his work inspired me, Adam was happy." "We didn’t touch his desk. I’m not sure if there was even a discussion about it (though I suspect our head of game development, Todd Howard, had something to do with it). We just left it alone, like a holy place, somewhere to worship at the feet of creativity." "Time stretched by, and his room remained wallpapered with his art; incredible as always, bursting with color and inspiration—except now, nothing was changed or added. The lights stayed off. The only difference was that his fish tank of plant-growth had become a choked mess, one which no one bothered to clean up, since it was agreed that this was probably what he would have wanted anyway."

- Bethesda artist Jonah Lobe on Adam Adamowicz. Full article