Bethesda Concept Artist Adam Adamowicz Passed Away

Bethesda Game Studios’ concept artist Adam Adamowicz, who worked on Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, has passed away yesterday. Here are the words of fellow developer Fred Zeleny:

Just found out this morning about the passing of Adam Adamowicz, a brilliant artist and cherished friend. My deepest condolences go out to his family, friends, and fellow creative madmen and women.

From my first day working with him, Adam was a constant inspiration and gleeful provocateur. He was always ready with a brilliant idea, or a ridiculous story, or a dangerously powerful drink, and I’ll always cherish the memories of gallery tours and bar crawls with him – even if they are a little blurry around the edges.

Adam knew how to celebrate life, and I know the last thing he’d want is for us to be mired in mourning. It’s hard to smile right about now, but I’m sure Adam can still inspire us all to celebrate life – his and our own.

And an article on Awesome Robo that points out his contributions, especially to Fallout 3:

Earlier today we learned that Adam Adamowicz, one of the main concept artists behind Fallout 3, Skyrim and other Bethesda titles, passed away today. It was silently announced, but I’d like to shine some light on Adam because he was an anomaly in the game industry, a veritable one-man conceptual machine, who unlike his contemporary counterparts, did a majority of his work in non digital mediums. Fallout 3 was pretty much visually designed from the ground up by one humble man who got little to no recognition, nor sought it.

For those who are unaware, I also work in the videogame industry as a concept artist and often sought inspiration from what other conceptual designers were doing in the industry. Back when Fallout 3 was released, it came with a making of DVD showcasing how the game was built from the ground up. When Adam’s art pit showed up in the video, with his own hand drawn art covering every inch of space from the ground up in his cubicle I was nothing short of blown away, and filled with inspiration.

Hearing him talk about how he approached visual design changed my mindset about how I approached concept art, it had a real effect on me. Seriously, just sit back and imagine how much work it took one man to design a world as vast as Fallout 3 over the course of its development. For most artists in this industry that would seem like an impossible feat! Adam had something special going on, and was committed to the vision that everyone around him had at Bethesda. The fact that the game industry has lost this bright mind is a major blow in my opinion, and through our little blog I hope to shed some light on an event that most gaming blogs couldn’t care less about.

Our deepest, sincerest condolences go to his family, friends and colleagues for this tragic event.