New World Notes

Cajsa’s Flickr Pick: Larah Johnson Turns Screenshots of Hit Games Into Art

Larah Johnson's photostream is gamer art. "Out of Gas", taken in Resident Evil 2 (remake), uses the rule of thirds to create a sense of isolation and menace. Not for nothing, the diagonal line of neon on the roof creates a line extending to the lower right corner. Diagonal lines are powerful leading lines.

In "Side Parting" from Assassin's Creed, she gives us a shot ready to hang in the Charles Russell Museum in Great Falls, MT:

Here is "The Guardian", taken in Metro Exodus:

Cajsa’s Flickr Pick: West Shaka Photographs Second Life's Surfer Community

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

West Shaka's photostream is an exploration of a large SL community-- the surfers of Second Life. He takes excellent action shots, framing them beautifully. He puts you right in the water -- don't you think you are just about to get splashed? You feel the sense of movement because he's not centered. Traditional advice is to frame the subject so they can move across the shot; but often, if you put the subject where they are soon to move out of the frame, you get a greater sense of speed. Blink! You might miss it.

Cajsa’s Flickr Pick Of The Day: Chinese Artist Hsu Tung Han Carves "Pixelating" Sculptures from Wood

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Hsu Tung Han is a Chinese sculptor who carves statues out of Coastal Cypress. This may seem like a far cry from game screenshots, but there is a digital element to his woodcarving – pixelation.

His more recent work seems to catch people in the process of being digitized. Is he saying, "I am an analog man in a digital world"?  Or is he seeing our coming evolution to something transhuman? In "Magician" (above, all titles featured here translated from the Chinese) most of his body is still resolved, and the pixelation is concentrated around his upper body, that part of the anatomy that interacts most with the digital. 

In "Slip and Slide" (below) the pixelation seems more ominous, as though it in the process of transitioning the subject into a prison, behind the window looking out at the world:

Cajsa’s Flickr Pick Of The Day: Wren Turns Screenshots from Far Cry, Alien: Isolation, and theHunter Into Works of Art

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Wren does beautiful work with screenshots from TheHunter: Call of the Wild. Take this shot that made me all homesick for the Northwoods if I pretend there are no mountains off in the distance. (On a brief tangent, mountains off in this distance always cracked me up on "Little House on the Prairie." Those people had magic-vision enabling them to see more 1100 miles away.) From her notes in Flickr, it looks as though she stitched two shots together and increased the definition of the picture using Reshade. She took her pictures during gameplay using Cinematic Tools, a game hack to allow players to control the in-game camera which earned its creator a lifetime ban from some games.

Wren's entire photostream is full of beautiful landscapes, exciting action shots, and portraits from several different games:

Cajsa’s Flickr Pick Of The Day: The Dreamy Digital Paintings of Olympe Rhode

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Olympe Rhode has a photostream to fall in love with. "les Elfes de la forêt" evokes emotion with the intense romantic connection between the subjects emphasized by how the moon illuminates only them, as though all the world has fallen away. They look intensely at each other. They seem at once delicate and determined, as though they are new lovers. (The characters were created by Mello Minotaur for the "Tell Me a Story" exhibition on Porto.)

So I love "Va et vient" from Rhode for how a Second Life screenshot can, through the use of texture layers, come to look like an aged oil painting. It is beautifully framed with some branches in the foreground to give it depth. It's made even more atmospheric with the patina of time.

Cajsa’s Friday Instagram Pick: Eve Kazan Photographs the Best of Sansar

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Xiola Linden saw our post requesting Sansar pictures and turned me on to Eve Kazan's Instagram. I follow Eve's fabulous Flickr stream and had no idea that her instagram would be anything different, but it is. I love this "Sleeping Giant" and that Eve shot from a more unusual angle, with the foot right up front rather than from the side. It makes it more humorous. [Visit in Sansar here. - ed]

Here in "A city is more than a place in space" she uses the rule of thirds and leading lines to draw us down the street. Her picture invites us to explore.

Cajsa’s Flickr Pick Of The Day: Artful Photos of Tom Clancy's The Division 2

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

I like this photostream of gamer Agt. Morgan Creed. Most of the screenshots have been desaturated or changed to black and white which gives them a more dramatic feeling. We are not distracted by color and focus more on the shapes and interplay of light and dark.

I don't know what's happening in Tom Clancy's Division, but it is destructive. Nonetheless, with the focus on sunlight and shadow, even destruction becomes beautiful. According to the description, the picture is taken in Photomode; there is no editing. So, like Second Life, they allow users to choose photofilters in-game to produce artistic effects. The most important element, though, is still the skill in framing the photo.

Here is another unedited picture, artfully framed so that our eyes follow the leading lines of the street, creating bold geometric blocks of light and shade:

Cajsa’s SL Flickr Choice Of The Day: Absinthe's Amazingly Detailed Second Life Images Turned Into Perfect Polaroid Shots

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

I love Absinthe's photo "Wish You Were Here" because it is everything it should be: An old black and white Polaroid snap of someone in a specific moment. The train speeds by and the blur she added in Photoshop gives us that movement. So does her skirt and her hair blowing in the gusts of the train.

So, in terms of SL fashion styling, this required finding not just a skirt, but a blowing-in-the-wind skirt, and not just hair but blowing-in-the-wind hair, and both of similar intensity. This takes time and attention to detail -- which you might discover if you browse Flickr for long and find the photos of trees blowing one way and hair blowing another. Other details that are often missed: She took off her shoes and made her feet flat. Her shoes are in her hand. This is someone who didn't just put on an outfit but thought out the implications of her clothing in the photo.

Her Flickr stream is called "Absinthe's Polaroid Moments" because all her pictures reflect that conceit:

Seeking Aesthetic Sansar Screenshots for Cajsa's Column on Virtual World Art

Now that Cajsa Lilliehook is expanding her NWN column devoted to great virtual world screenshot art and digital painting beyond Second Life to games like Assassin's Creed and GRIS, she's also looking for artistically composed screenshots from Sansar. So far, she tells me, there isn't much that stands out on Flickr. So if you know of any, please get in touch with her on Flickr or on Twitter.

"Fishing Monsters" by Carthalis Rossini (above) is among the few arresting Sansar images she's come across so far. Her appraisal:

Cajsa’s Flickr Choice Of The Day: Screen Captures of Assassin's Creed & Other Games Turned Into Beautifully Composed Art

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Fusrodahdude has an interesting eye that sets him apart. I mean this quite literally. In this photo [above] where the diagonal camera view gives momentum and movement to the rider and camel. The wide angle adds the sense of adventure and distance.

Here the picture is shot from beneath which seems to guarantee that the person leaning back will soon be defeated. We always assume the one on top will win.

More from Assassin's Creed below: