This article was first published in the August 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online
Winchester-based artist Olly Moss has built a devoted following for his smart, stylised posters for pop-culture phenomena, from Star Wars to Marvel-commissioned artwork for Thor to the cover of the video game Resistance 3. So when Sean Vanaman and Jake Rodkin, two of the creative leads on Telltale Games' award-winning The Walking Dead, decided to found a new games studio, they turned to Moss with an idea. "Before it was always, 'Would you like to do packaging design, or T-shirts?'," says Moss, 28. "Which is flattering, but I wanted to get my hands dirty."
Together, the three of them founded the studio Campo Santo. In their first title, Firewatch, out this summer, players take on the role of Henry, a fire warden in the wilds of Wyoming's National Park. With no company but a radio link to his supervisor, Henry finds mysterious happenings drawing him from the safety of his watchtower. To create the game's stunning environments, Moss's original sketches were turned into a 3D world by Campo Santo's designers. After an initial "paintover" -- changing objects in the level to increase their visual impact -- Moss then adjusted details such as fog, colour and lighting to bring it closer to his vision, both within the game's engine and using more traditional tools. "It's like grading a film -- you can export screenshots to Photoshop, tweak the colours and export it back into the game." The result: less a game, more a playable, explorable Moss artwork.
Although most of the action in Firewatch takes place in the great outdoors, Henry's cluttered watch station gave Moss a chance to put his graphic design skills to bear on everything from book covers to cereal packets. "Every time I get bored with drawing rocks and trees I go, 'Fuck it, I'm going to make a book cover,'" says Moss. "It's like having dessert after a meal of trees, rocks and sky." Firewatch is out this summer for PC, Mac and Linux
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
