III. Interview with… Alistair Grant, Environment Artist
Alastair Grant, Blade Runner, Unreal Engine, 2020
Officially hailing from Manchester, U.K, environment artist Alistair Grant's provenance feels decidedly beyond the remit of shipyards, or the deep, burning hearts beneath blue and red jerseys. This is reflected in the imaginative quality of his work, which carries with it a precise and ambitious handling of scale and detail far beyond the scope of Britania. Or for that matter, Earth.
In the wake of the narratively divisive, albeit aesthetically lauded Game of Thrones and the unprecedented, ongoing ambitions of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the term 'world-building' is very much in vogue. But, like most concepts and phrases swept up in the cool, much of that term’s nuance and depth is eschewed in favour of the social cachet it’s mentioning often evokes. This is not the case with Grant's work, which is informed by his formal training in Sculpture at the University of Edinburgh, and inspired by a diverse range of world-builders from Tolkein to Halo developers, Bungie Inc. Currently, he works as an Environment Artist for video game publishers Pixel Toys.
Speaking about his latest project, an homage to sci-fi epic Solaris, the ambition of Grant's weltkraft is as grand as it is clear: "As an artist working in the VR video game industry, I'm always looking to push into new areas in realtime technologies and with Solaris, I hope to present a 'true to the book' vision of the alien-ocean and its generative fractal structures in a way that is yet to be done".
The project's impetus also confirms Grant's artistic sensibilities, which are sensitive to both the quotidian and exceptional aspects of world and space alike. "I still have a gut feeling [of what] im chasing regarding the dichotomy of whittling a maquette in my hands on the sofa and then sitting at the computer and making a mile high version of it in a fraction of the time...could well be a gut fear of my own obsolescence from automation," Grant said of his current cyber-sculpture praxis which recalls Ridley Scott in tone and atmosphere, and Stanislaw Lem in experimentalism.
In conversation with The Empty Set below, which has been lightly edited and condensed, Grant discusses the significance of these themes in both his digital and analogue praxes, the motivations behind their creation, and an intimation of the trajectory of their development. - Kwasu Tembo
What are the biggest similarities and differences between your online sculptural praxis and offline sculptural praxis?
Intravenous Glass, 2012, Resin, Wood, Horns
If you’re referring to traditional physical Sculpture versus my current realtime (video game ready) digital art, I think the similarities are a little hard to quantify, and ultimately maybe quite scant. My digital work has a medium-high barrier to entry in terms of equipment, software toolset and the actual craft workflow required to make what I want to make. My intentions now are to produce compelling spaces and places, but ultimately my output is lacking a more abstract or rigorous sense of inquiry because the priorities are different. Whilst I am still making work that is broadly considered ‘art’ I personally feel its more art adjacent.
As someone who enjoys physical work I need to maintain a connection to processes like carving and casting, using tools and materials in a traditional sense. It's at this point that I do see the two praxis feed into one another subtly. A deeper understanding of real world physical objects helps me replicate them in the digital space. However, replication can be a little unfulfilling, so I am stretching my creative legs by moving into fictional and imagined world building.
A lot of my sculpture I imagined as part of a broader scene and what the audience was viewing was a selected object pulled out of that scene, an example of this would be my sculpture titled Intravenous, Horn Piece (2011). In my current practice I have the capacity to make fully realised scenes, so I'm fulfilling that pre-existing inclination, but the trade off is that objects existing in a filled out space are de-emphasised by nature of them existing alongside others, instead of being pulled out and presented in isolation. Now, the narrative weight is placed on the scene holistically and I push environmental storytelling, using a collection of objects to suggest the way in which the space is used, and the characters that make use of it, and why.
According to you, what three things make a game especially good? What three things make a game especially bad?
For the good things, to summarise game critic Austin Walker’s (Vice Games, formerly Waypoints) expression of his own preferences which I too share, “to poke and prod at a game and for it to push back” and “I love it when a plan falls apart”. My interpretation of these moments are illuminating when games can feel the most alive, vital and the medium functioning at its truest principles. Systemic interactions in an immersive simulated world all sound very tech and intangible. But speaking to a character inside their bedroom that you just happened to walk into (because the player can do whatever they want, right?) and they are quite rightly flustered and force you to leave, setting off a chain of events is contextual and believable in its restrictions in a way in which the player is forced to improvise, and you might be surprised by your own response, you might learn something about yourself or how you could/should treat others.
Secondly, good music and a compelling soundscape can take an ok game into greatness and let it stay with you for a while, which says something about a medium set up to be consumed and disposable. Just like with cinema, audio can do a huge amount of the heavy lifting of establishing tone and atmosphere and some of my favourite games (Metal Gear Solid 3, Bioshock, Overwatch) are games that pay slavish attention to soundscapes. When characters are delivering dialogue outdoors it's dissonant when they sound like they are right up to a mic.
With my third good I can also express my first bad, I love it when a game gives me, the player, fine control of movement (like in the FromSoftware games your player can turn on a dime, but it looks unabashedly ‘gamey’) and I strongly dislike the prestige games approach like God of War and NaughtyDog which have incredible animation fluidity but are unresponsive to player input. They prioritise how the sequence looks rather than feels: a concession to cinema.
Second bad. It wouldn’t be a proper list without a contradiction! I wish games, at least mainstream ones, would feel less ‘gamey’, at least in terms of their writing and dialogue, including character motivations and justification for the protagonist's action. For sure you can find fresh writing for world building, quests and narrative arcs but you have to look for it in the indie scene. Overall I do think the bar is rising in this area.
Third bad is when games don’t respect your time. Sure, who doesn’t like a luxuriantly-lengthed role playing epic, but when games are padded and bloated, like butter scraped over too much bread, we could do with seeing this as a detraction rather than something neutral. I think there is a kind of peer pressure in the AAA (blockbuster) industry, a perceived audience expectancy for bigger, more, more stuff, more content and an ‘open world’ setting with some pretty uninspired mechanics bolted onto it - seems to be the flavour of the past decade. I just find it depressing because it's a cold reminder that these are essentially products.
Alastair Grant, Moving Swiftly Onwards, 2017, Jesmonite and animation
How do concept art and sculpture intersect?
I don’t mean this to be derogatory to concept art in any way but it's typically a trigger towards further work, it’s the starting point. I’m pretty envious of modern concept artists because the digital tools they use (stylus and photoshop) are similar to traditional draftsmanship, and it's intuitive. However as an environment artist making things in 3D, I am required to work with a keyboard and mouse across 3-4+ software packages.
If concept art is at the pioneering forefront of establishing a fictional world, done in discussion with the writers who conjure the world building through imagination, then the role of sculpture is to receive the baton and run with what is given. A sculptor, such as a character or environment artist is further down the pipeline and it's our responsibility to take a visual brief and turn it into a place and a space to inhabit. But what I just laid out suggests a compartmentalised relationship between concept art and sculpture, which I feel does exist when working in 3D. But when working in 2D (which admittedly I don’t have much experience in) the intersection can be such that they are one and the same. For games like Ori, Banner Saga and Darkest Dungeon I would imagine the concept artist might work directly with the level designer and my role is diminished or non-existent. But importantly you are part of a bigger mechanism, compared to fine art sculpture where the entire concept might start and end with the individual.
What is the most important thing people don’t know about sculpture and game design? How do these fields overlap in your praxis?
I’m not a game-designer so my observations can only really go so far, but a comparison can be made in terms of how the audience is afforded perspective with regards to the work, and I mean this in the literal sense like looking with your eyes. With sculpture you are presented with an object in a particular way and are typically free to orient around it however you please, perhaps viewing it from the side silhouetted by a window, from down low on your haunches, interrogating it from the outside. With a game you are placed into an environment (be it 2D or 3D) through varying perspectives (third person, first person, top down) and you inspect it from the inside, the world as a cohesive entity is the object of your enquiry and the game experience is typically working in service of helping the player find out more about the place and context they are now inhabiting. Which means that games are typically about getting from point A to point B and the meat of the thing is the journey in between. An experience with a sculpture can be a fleeting encapsulated moment, a snapshot on your phone, quite literally, bearing in mind games are typically made to be lived with for a period of time like a TV box set, their structure is formally distinct.
Art Deco/nouveau props for Blade Runner scene
I think the title ‘game designer’, with emphasis on the latter word suggests that the relationship with the audience is more controlled, demarcated and less free to interpretation if viewed through an art versus design lens. At a reductive extreme where the player actually has a narrow input spectrum a comparison could be made with a puppet master, where the player has the illusion of agency and the designer establishes the boundaries of possibilities. And so as a form of protest the player may attempt to break the game, to jump out the invisible edges of the world, to speak to the same non-player character 100 times to try to find a bug, to push back.
How do we break our relationship between audience <-> sculptural object <-> sculptor/maker? Do we close our eyes? Do we choose not to pay the exhibition entry fee? Because interactivity in video games is implicit, the audience is empowered to mould the experience into what they expect of it, which is perhaps a through-line in new media.
A fine artist may work alone in their studio, having their work critiqued when they choose and their expressions limited only by timescales, as well as their own commitment to their line of enquiry, financial budget and stuff like physics (will this sculpture stand up if I make it in this way). Game designers, or game developers, however, have to battle with these alongside technical restrictions and commercial appeal (which can smooth off those interesting sharp edges). Games are typically made by many people, over many years, are expensive to make and very challenging from a craft perspective, so it’s no wonder compromises are made. I am in a continual tug of war between wanting games to be better than they are, while feeling the need to cut them some slack.
Three current fave game designers, in-game design, and concept artists?
My list for this kind of stuff is always changing but here is my current list.
Game designers:
Tracy Fullerton. Designer of Walden - a game (2017). I love the spirit and ambition of taking a beloved, ‘serious’ piece of philosophical literature and making a game with it, which would make trad academics shiver with disdain at its existence. So im just happy this exists as a cultural object and I think it was a really worthwhile endeavour. The inspiration mechanic was a nice touch and these kinds of experiences highlight how reductive ‘game’ as a term for the medium can be because this re-contextualises and refreshes access to the work in a way other mediums simply cannot.
Cornelia Geppert. I really love listening to Cornelia speak about games on podcasts and her presentations, she is just an awesome character and I admire her approach to pushing for meaningful experiences in games. Sea of Solitude (2019) was a game that was not afraid to explicitly explore themes of neglect, depression and self esteem and I'm excited to see what she is making next.
Hidetaka Miyazaki. The brains behind the FromSoftware suite of games (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and the forthcoming Elden Ring in collab with writer George RR Martin) which are punishing but fair, cruel and majestic, and they ultimately have helped me discover my inner dogged determination. No other studios compare and they have created a genre themselves with many imitators now attempting to follow suit, but none can capture the tone, the decaying atmosphere, the depth of lore, oh the music is phenomenal too. Their games are intoxicating and make me start talking in superlatives so I will stop now.
Concept artists (interpreting also as character and environment artists):
Yoji Shinkawa. The lifeblood of the visual design behind the Metal Gear Solid series. Makes me want to be a character artist when I look at his work and adorn my bedroom with his stylish graphic work.
Sady Fofona. Sady is an environment artist who makes really intricate geometrically detailed scenes and has a love for cables. I really admire his work and use him as a kind of quality measure, a level I want to try and reach.
Paul Chadeisson. I don’t think I have seen concept art that has ever captured a grand sense of scale better than Paul Chadeisson. He also tends to work in sci-fi spaces which is good with me! His Blade Runner 2049 is smoking hot.
Be sure to like and follow Grant's work on Instagram and Twitter: @aligrant3d / @AliGrant3DEA
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