What I Like...

When thinking about visual culture created with digital tools, a memory came to me of playing World of Warcraft and flying with my character over a fantasy world and marveling at how beautiful the artificial space was. With that memory in mind, I chose an image from a small section of that digitally created world. While the scenery itself is not photorealistic, tending to lean towards the cartoon side rather than realism, there is a certain amount of peace and serenity that this image exudes. This screenshot, however, is just one small glimpse into that fantasy world. While this spot may offer beauty, others in the game conjure up feelings of fear or danger. I believe that the artists and programmers that worked on creating World of Warcraft did a brilliant job of bringing an entire explorable world to life, and it is that level of immersion that draws me towards it.

While I am quite new to the world of digital media and unfamiliar with most methods of creating it, I can speculate that simple sketches were perhaps first drawn before designing 3d models to be rendered digitally, at least for the solid objects in the scenery. It's possible that digital painting was also utilized, particularly to create the sky.