Jason Manley is Creating Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition Portraits While Reminiscing About It

It’s unclear if he’ll be contributing to Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition as well, but it’s definitely worth noting an update to Jason Manley’s Facebook page that brings the good news that the former Black Isle Studios portrait artist (and former Massive Black CEO) has been recruited by Overhaul Games to work on “a big batch” of new portraits for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition. Hearing him reminisce about the good times at BIS makes me even more excited that so many of the original members are involved in this latest endeavor:

On break from painting up a big batch of portraits for Baldurs Gate. Nostalgic memory floods from my early days at Black Isle. Feargus Urquhart giving me open proxy access to get onto playboy’s website for reference hunting (and the confused looks of other co-workers as I searched away), Joshua Eric Sawyer writing descriptions for me when he was the BIS super webmaster, Stephen Bokkes brainstorming levels with me, Pete Meihuizen’s drum and bass and lunch at the gyspy den, Justin Sweet’s invaluable lessons for puddnhead and I, Darren Monahan and that plastic bat ritualistically carried during the collection of morning updates, Malavon lunchbreaks and QUAKE 3, Puddnhead hanging a massive nude oil painting (with bush) in his office regardless of what corporate thought, Andrew Jones turning down ILM to join us in the pursuit of art, Chris Parker moving me out of painting dirt and into concept art, Vance Kovacs talks about color theory and teaching me to texture 3D dirt in lightwave, and tons of other thoughts about the Black Isle gurus who have kicked so much ass in the industry since my career began. I am officially in the time warp of nerdy delicious awesome 🙂 …and it has me painting again. Thanks to Andrew and Puddnhead for encouraging me to do this. It is nice to see that I can, in fact, still paint a head….though I am breaking my promise to never paint elves or dwarves again. I forgot how fun this was. Forever a games geek at heart…and full of fond memories from the past. Thanks to Trent Oster for the opportunity to relive some of the old days.