Harry Nesbitt
Harry Nesbitt is a English born digital artist and game developer who is widely known for his artistic talent in the award winning Alto’s Adventure Series (game) and other titles. He is actively working on new projects and games with an online presence to showcase his work.
Illustrations
His illustrations in Alto’s Adventure Series really stuck out to me as his ability to prescribe vast and detailed landscapes with immense atmosphere through normal geometric shapes was astonishing. Harry brilliantly differentiates the foreground from the background while establishing the foreground as the most prominent visual (often making the colour more “pure” while creating a tint in the background). In his work he creates multiple vastly diverse environments each with a different atmosphere, often using shades of a same colour to visually prescribe how cold or hot it is. He often uses a limited colour palette in each individual area and uses dark fading gradients to mimic the reflective glare of the moon/sun/stars.
Alto’s Adventures
All four of these images contain the same alpine mountain setting yet Harry’s ability to deploy 4 diversely unique and immensely captivating environments based on the use of light and weather is phenomenal. He is very careful in his light sources and although it is a geometric world the light sources present a sense of realism to the scene through the natural tones and the occasional lens flare they give off.
Alto’s Odyssey
Aligned with the values in his previous game, Harry uses a more sophisticated and diverse setting using more points, edges and shapes to create a slightly more luminous and detailed world whilst still differentiating foreground from background.
Trying Harry Nesbit’s Artistic style:
I started with small and basic illustrative visuals I want use towards my project in my “Activities” section for camping and beach locations. This was the end result.
I used many of Harry’s features that he deploys on Alto’s Adventure such as:
- Establishing a foreground & background
- Using geometrical shapes
- Glare of sun/moon reflecting off objects and using gradients to achieve this.
- Sticking to limited colour scheme (not using too many colours)
- Allowing the mood of the weather/sky to dictate my colour palette such as using cool blues to show the coldness of night and warm golden hue representing the sunset at golden hour.
- Created lens flare effect around moon/sun (Harry deploys this by using fading low opacity rectangles, although here I have went for more of a circular effect)
Doing this has helped me understand the creative approach I want to use with my illustrations in my app to create a beautiful, immersive and colourful environment.