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Obituary: Bethesda concept artist Adam Adamowicz

The man who defined the look of Fallout 3 succumbs to cancer

Adam Adamowicz, a concept artist best known for his work with Bethesda, died of cancer last week.

Bethesda's Pete Hines revealed the news through his Twitter feed, and Todd Howard dedicated Skyrim's AIAS award for best RPG to Adamowicz's memory.

Adamowicz contributed to the recent smash hit Skyrim, but his creative voice is most apparent on Bethesda's reinvention of the Fallout franchise, for which his copious, detailed artwork was the basis.

Prior to joining Bethesda, Adamowicz supplied art for the Dark Horse Comics anthology New Recruits, Fantagrafics Books' Duplex Planet, and cover illustrations for Malibu Graphics.

On his personal blog, Adamowicz also recalled, "a lot of years surviving on odd jobs, from driving an ice-cream truck, building haunted houses, fabricating window display sculptures, to apprentice tattooing, and, yes, as a cake decorator for a bakery specialising in erotic cake designs. How do ya like that?"

The artist's collective blog AwesomeRobo paid tribute with a heartfelt post describing Adamowicz as an, "anomaly in the games 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."

To see more of Adamowicz's work and read his thoughts on art and design, visit his blog.

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Matthew Handrahan avatar
Matthew Handrahan joined GamesIndustry in 2011, bringing long-form feature-writing experience to the team as well as a deep understanding of the video game development business. He previously spent more than five years at award-winning magazine gamesTM.
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