Vulcan Software News
12th March 2001
The Dead Free Scrolls
Fine Art Clash with Hi Tech A recent advert on our Valhalla website has provoked some
journalistic curiosity, it simply suggests that, 'we are looking for people to do unpaid work',
with the promise of possible future employment! We could hear the 'raising of eyebrows' from company
executives, as they filled in their employees wage checks and who'd have imagined that a creative staff
agency 'boss' could hold their breathe for that length of time?
But alas, we are not intending (or succeeding) to change the practice of employment within the
development industry. To explain ourselves, it's simply Vulcan giving an opportunity for a
breed of creatives that seem to have been shunted to one side (with regards to computer game development),
namely the fine artist!
A commercial product normally requires the texture artists, the 3d modelers, the aesthetic designers,
the 3d world builders, the 3d animators and the bitmap artists. If they're lucky the proverbial
'fine artist' may be hired (at the last minute) to knock up a promotional CD cover or the odd poster.
All too often the fine artist (with oil paints and canvas in hand) is left to sunset scenes,
haggling with tourists on Blackpool pier.
Over the years we have been contacted by hundreds of artists who can paint, and boy can they paint!
Viewing scanned canvas always made me commission a portrait of the love of my life, but never
went as far as seeing how they could be permanently employed to work on computer games,
when it comes to animating pixel perfect blinking or fine tuning 3d lips for speech
synchronization the fine artist would stare with a tube of charcoal number
17 clutched tightly in hand, ranting phrases such as 'I'd rather cut off my left ear'.
And so here we are, one of our projects in development 'Valhalla & The Curse of Infinity'
is founded upon an extremely detailed history, this background information, although not
crucial to playing the game, was mainly used as a reference to aid the development.
As this material grew to an incredible size, we saw an opportunity on how it could be used
for future merchandise that would help promote the 'Valhalla' brand.
The historic scrolls of 'Valhalla' (for which there are over 100) will gradually
appear on the website. Due to their complexity and the phrase, 'a picture paints a thousand words',
we saw a way of using the fine artists talent (in the form of an oil painting) which would enhance
the scrolls written text. Eventually these scrolls 'and paintings' will be published within
illustrated books, with each painting having a limited edition print run for commercial
consumption and eventually the original masterpiece being auctioned for charity.
We decided to offer 'all fine artists from around the world', the opportunity to paint and submit
his or her interpretation of any of the 'Valhalla' scrolls. If accepted, their work would
be displayed on the Valhalla website, they would receive an ongoing royalty from the
sales of the illustrated books and all the profits from the limited edition prints,
the best artists would then be offered permanent employment as the Valhalla brand grows and
requires more oil based interpretations of the scrolls.
Overall we felt this was good way of giving many struggling artists an opportunity to have
their work publicly presented in the hi-tech market!
Live Long & Prosper!
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