Bradley W. Schenck
Encyclopedia
Bradley W. Schenck is an American
artist
and game designer.
Schenck's art is widely recognized for its strong themes and rigorous structure applied to fantastic
subjects that is reminiscent of the work of members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
. His work has been strongly influenced by traditional Celtic art
and the Art Nouveau
style. Nonetheless, while his style contains elements and motifs from these styles, Schenck has developed a style which includes a wide range of elements from art both classic and modern which he executes with his own strong sense of line and space.
and the role playing game community. He also had a strong work ethic and was stubbornly self-reliant.
Some of Schenck's earliest published work can be found in the Arduin
role playing game book Welcome to Skull Tower. Schenck's early work can often be identified by his artist's signature "Morno" or the sigil of the moon with an inscribed letter 'M.' All of the art in this volume was produced by Schenck except for a couple of pieces produced by Erol Otus
. Schenck's work also appeared in other role playing game publications of the day. His early work displays Schenck's strong sense of scene composition, dramatic shading, and effective use of line weight. However, at this point there is still some uncertainty in his execution of form.
This changed rapidly, however, as the work presented in The Runestaff and various publications of the Society for Creative Anachronism in the early 1980s attests. His control over form, particularly of people, had improved dramatically. During this time his command of further detail in his work grew with each piece produced. For example, with one piece he became unsatisfied with an idealized presentation of the moon
. He reworked the piece after researching the actual appearance of the moon in different phases to present the moon in the piece with a realistic appearance which also bore the stamp of his personal style. During this time his artist signature changed to his monogram: 'BWS'.
Much of his work during this time was sold at science fiction conventions and private auctions. Among the most popular of his pieces were watercolors of line art originals. During this time, his pieces often presented moody scenes of stylized Celts in dramatic landscapes, as opposed to his earlier compositions of fairly conventionalized high fantasy motifs. The character expressed in his human forms also became deeper and more expressive, evoking a strong sense of the artist's emotion.
computer in 1982. While the graphics of this system were far too crude for Schenck to consider using it as a tool of visual art, Schenck still managed to express himself artistically through it. Using the BASIC
programming language, Schenck first entered, then debugged a computer role playing game. Once it was functional, Schenck added additional characters and events to the game expressive of his personal style of irreverence. A poison gas trap from the original game was replaced with flatulent rats, and a conventional wizard character was replaced with Bufo, a wizard with a malevolent attitude and magical abilities that were frequently ineffective. The game was further modified and renamed as Ratquest later. Schenck's modifications were retained and embellished by both Schenck and others, and the game went on to be implemented on a range of different systems including the HP 2100
, HP 3000
, CP/M
, Commodore 64
, Commodore Amiga
, and later in Java
for multiple platforms (RatQuest 20th Year Edition, 2002).
Shortly after he began using computers, Schenck took a job as a designer at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant
. There he earned a significant wage for designing pipe supports while continuing to develop as an artist in his time outside work.
sets Rudyard Kipling's poems to music. The book was published by Off-Centaur Publications in 1983 and 1987. Schenck also did art for the Centaur Pillow Book, which contained erotic illustrations of fantastic creatures.
He wrote several utility programs for the 64, including software for selecting the appropriate strings for a celtic harp
. He also experimented with computer graphics on this system, producing his earliest computer art. Among his experiements were designs for software which would display graphically stunning banner pages at key points in adventure games that Schenck designed, comparable to the cut scenes of later software.
The C64 was not the most crude computer medium Brad has worked with. The IBM-PC's CGA
graphics were significantly less sophisticated, yet Brad managed to create stunning images for this system for the game Mind-Roll by Epyx
.
s for the Amiga Killer Demo Contest. He won the contest for three years running, obtaining better hardware with which to work as well as opportunities to apply his art to computer games for a number of different developers.
. He formed company Terra Nova Development with veteran programmer Michal Todarovic. The game was published by Electronic Arts
and received moderate success, though it earned little revenue for the partners of Terra Nova Development. It is considered a classic today, both for its story line and for Schenck's art, and has been ported to current systems and re-released by Wyrmkeep Entertainment.
. It features characters from many famous children's books done in Schenck's distinctive style, wound into a single expansive composition which features images of children entering the piece at floor level. The unveiling of the mural featured a performance by Schenck's friend, musician Patrick Ball
.
Much of Schenck's prior work can likewise be seen on his personal website.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
and game designer.
Schenck's art is widely recognized for its strong themes and rigorous structure applied to fantastic
Fantastic
The Fantastic is a literary term that describes a quality of other literary genres, and, in some cases, is used as a genre in and of itself, although in this case it is often conflated with the Supernatural. The term was originated in the structuralist theory of critic Tzvetan Todorov in his work...
subjects that is reminiscent of the work of members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...
. His work has been strongly influenced by traditional Celtic art
Celtic art
Celtic art is the art associated with the peoples known as Celts; those who spoke the Celtic languages in Europe from pre-history through to the modern period, as well as the art of ancient peoples whose language is uncertain, but have cultural and stylistic similarities with speakers of Celtic...
and the Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
style. Nonetheless, while his style contains elements and motifs from these styles, Schenck has developed a style which includes a wide range of elements from art both classic and modern which he executes with his own strong sense of line and space.
Early work
Schenck began his work as an artist at an early age, as a result of moving out of his parents home to live on his own at the age of 14. He had a strong network of friends that assisted him through his connections in the Society for Creative AnachronismSociety for Creative Anachronism
The Society for Creative Anachronism is an international living history group with the aim of studying and recreating mainly Medieval European cultures and their histories before the 17th century...
and the role playing game community. He also had a strong work ethic and was stubbornly self-reliant.
Some of Schenck's earliest published work can be found in the Arduin
Arduin
Arduin is a fictional universe and fantasy role-playing system created in the mid 1970s by David A. Hargrave. It was perhaps the first "cross-genre" fantasy RPG, with everything from interstellar wars to horror and historical drama, although it was based primarily in the medieval fantasy...
role playing game book Welcome to Skull Tower. Schenck's early work can often be identified by his artist's signature "Morno" or the sigil of the moon with an inscribed letter 'M.' All of the art in this volume was produced by Schenck except for a couple of pieces produced by Erol Otus
Erol Otus
Erol Otus is an American artist and game designer, known internationally for his contributions to the fantasy RPG genre, most notably for the early Dungeons & Dragons franchise...
. Schenck's work also appeared in other role playing game publications of the day. His early work displays Schenck's strong sense of scene composition, dramatic shading, and effective use of line weight. However, at this point there is still some uncertainty in his execution of form.
This changed rapidly, however, as the work presented in The Runestaff and various publications of the Society for Creative Anachronism in the early 1980s attests. His control over form, particularly of people, had improved dramatically. During this time his command of further detail in his work grew with each piece produced. For example, with one piece he became unsatisfied with an idealized presentation of the moon
Moon
The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
. He reworked the piece after researching the actual appearance of the moon in different phases to present the moon in the piece with a realistic appearance which also bore the stamp of his personal style. During this time his artist signature changed to his monogram: 'BWS'.
Much of his work during this time was sold at science fiction conventions and private auctions. Among the most popular of his pieces were watercolors of line art originals. During this time, his pieces often presented moody scenes of stylized Celts in dramatic landscapes, as opposed to his earlier compositions of fairly conventionalized high fantasy motifs. The character expressed in his human forms also became deeper and more expressive, evoking a strong sense of the artist's emotion.
Introduction to computers
Schenck is widely known for his computer art. His introduction to computers was through a Commodore VIC-20Commodore VIC-20
The VIC-20 is an 8-bit home computer which was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PET...
computer in 1982. While the graphics of this system were far too crude for Schenck to consider using it as a tool of visual art, Schenck still managed to express himself artistically through it. Using the BASIC
BASIC
BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use - the name is an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code....
programming language, Schenck first entered, then debugged a computer role playing game. Once it was functional, Schenck added additional characters and events to the game expressive of his personal style of irreverence. A poison gas trap from the original game was replaced with flatulent rats, and a conventional wizard character was replaced with Bufo, a wizard with a malevolent attitude and magical abilities that were frequently ineffective. The game was further modified and renamed as Ratquest later. Schenck's modifications were retained and embellished by both Schenck and others, and the game went on to be implemented on a range of different systems including the HP 2100
HP 2100
The HP 2100 was a series of minicomputers produced by Hewlett-Packard from the mid-1960s to early 1990s. The 2100 was also a specific model in this series. The series was renamed HP 1000 by the 1970s and sold as real-time computers, complementing the more complex IT-oriented HP 3000, and would be...
, HP 3000
HP 3000
The HP 3000 series is a family of minicomputers released by Hewlett-Packard in 1973. It was designed to be the first minicomputer delivered with a full featured operating system with time-sharing. The first models were withdrawn from the market until speed improvements could be made. It ultimately...
, CP/M
CP/M
CP/M was a mass-market operating system created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc...
, Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
, Commodore Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
, and later in Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
for multiple platforms (RatQuest 20th Year Edition, 2002).
Shortly after he began using computers, Schenck took a job as a designer at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant
Diablo Canyon Power Plant
Diablo Canyon Power Plant is an electricity-generating nuclear power plant at Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo County, California. The plant has two Westinghouse-designed 4-loop pressurized-water nuclear reactors operated by Pacific Gas & Electric. The facility is located on about in Avila Beach,...
. There he earned a significant wage for designing pipe supports while continuing to develop as an artist in his time outside work.
Cold Iron
A major commercial project for Schenck in the mid-1980s was the layout, design, and art of the songbook Cold Iron, in which Leslie FishLeslie Fish
Leslie Fish is a filk musician, author, and anarchist political activist.-Music:Along with The DeHorn Crew, in 1976 she created the first commercial filk recording, Folk Songs for Folk Who Ain't Even Been Yet...
sets Rudyard Kipling's poems to music. The book was published by Off-Centaur Publications in 1983 and 1987. Schenck also did art for the Centaur Pillow Book, which contained erotic illustrations of fantastic creatures.
Commodore 64
Schenck's involvement with computers grew when he obtained a Commodore 64. His involvement with the gaming community became very deep very quickly, and is displayed in various ways, including his Emily Patella comic for the New Zork Times of Spring 1989.He wrote several utility programs for the 64, including software for selecting the appropriate strings for a celtic harp
Harp
The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...
. He also experimented with computer graphics on this system, producing his earliest computer art. Among his experiements were designs for software which would display graphically stunning banner pages at key points in adventure games that Schenck designed, comparable to the cut scenes of later software.
The C64 was not the most crude computer medium Brad has worked with. The IBM-PC's CGA
Color Graphics Adapter
The Color Graphics Adapter , originally also called the Color/Graphics Adapter or IBM Color/Graphics Monitor Adapter, introduced in 1981, was IBM's first color graphics card, and the first color computer display standard for the IBM PC....
graphics were significantly less sophisticated, yet Brad managed to create stunning images for this system for the game Mind-Roll by Epyx
Epyx
Epyx, Inc. was a video game developer and publisher in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. The company was founded as Automated Simulations by Jim Connelley and Jon Freeman, originally using Epyx as a brand name for action-oriented games before renaming the company to match in 1983...
.
Harp design and manufacture
Schenck turned his hand to the making of celtic harps for several years in the late 1980s. He learned the craft under the tutelage of Jay Witcher, who also taught other famous harp makers such as Chris Caswell the craft. His harps were known for their excellent sound and beautiful decoration, but Schenck decided to leave the business as too much of the work was rote manufacturing that did not allow him to express himself artistically as much as he hoped to do.Amiga
The introduction of the Amiga provided an affordable computer platform with which Schenck was able to express himself artistically. Schenck used an Amiga 500 to develop demoDemo (computer programming)
A demo is a non-interactive multimedia presentation made within the computer subculture known as the demoscene. Demogroups create demos to demonstrate their abilities in programming, music, drawing, and 3D modeling...
s for the Amiga Killer Demo Contest. He won the contest for three years running, obtaining better hardware with which to work as well as opportunities to apply his art to computer games for a number of different developers.
The Labyrinth of Time
After a number of successful projects Schenck sought to work on a project over which he could have greater creative control. For this project, he returned to his role playing game roots on the computer with The Labyrinth of TimeThe Labyrinth of Time
The Labyrinth of Time is a graphic adventure computer game created by Terra Nova Development, a two-man team composed of Bradley W. Schenck and Michal Todorovic. Intended to be the first in a series of games, The Labyrinth of Time was less successful than similar graphic adventures released around...
. He formed company Terra Nova Development with veteran programmer Michal Todarovic. The game was published by Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
and received moderate success, though it earned little revenue for the partners of Terra Nova Development. It is considered a classic today, both for its story line and for Schenck's art, and has been ported to current systems and re-released by Wyrmkeep Entertainment.
Thousand Oaks Library Mural
Schenck painted a mural for the children's area of the public library in Thousand Oaks, CaliforniaThousand Oaks, California
Thousand Oaks is a city in southeastern Ventura County, California, in the United States. It was named after the many oak trees that grace the area, and the city seal is adorned with an oak....
. It features characters from many famous children's books done in Schenck's distinctive style, wound into a single expansive composition which features images of children entering the piece at floor level. The unveiling of the mural featured a performance by Schenck's friend, musician Patrick Ball
Patrick Ball
Patrick Ball is a scientist, technologist, computer programmer, and an important figure in the global human rights movement. According to the New York Times Magazine, he is "one of the most admired figures in the field." He leads the Human Rights Program at Benetech, the Silicon Valley nonprofit...
.
Computer graphics work
Schenck has gone on to do further computer graphics work, including Star Trek: Starfleet Command III, Halls of the Dead: Faery Tale Adventure II, Dinotopia, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, Return to Zork and Spirit of Excalibur.Current work
Schenck has retired from computer game graphics and has decided to use the web as a medium for producing interactive books. His favored theme is presently retro-futuristic. This theme can be seen in much of his prior work as well, such as the scenes of The Labyrinth of Time that are placed in the future. His current projects can be seen at his website, webomator.com.Much of Schenck's prior work can likewise be seen on his personal website.
See also
- The Labyrinth of TimeThe Labyrinth of TimeThe Labyrinth of Time is a graphic adventure computer game created by Terra Nova Development, a two-man team composed of Bradley W. Schenck and Michal Todorovic. Intended to be the first in a series of games, The Labyrinth of Time was less successful than similar graphic adventures released around...
- I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (video game)
- Retro-futurismRetro-futurismRetro-futurism is a trend in the creative arts showing the influence of depictions of the future produced prior to about 1960...
- CinemawareCinemawareCinemaware was a computer game developer and publisher that released several popular titles in the 1980s based on various movie themes. The company was resurrected in 2000, before being acquired by eGames in 2005.-Cinemaware Corp...
- The Three Stooges (video game)The Three Stooges (video game)The Three Stooges is a video game originally released by Cinemaware in 1987 for the Commodore Amiga personal computer, based on the comedy act of the same name. In the game, players control Stooges Moe, Larry and Curly in minigames based on classic Stooges films with the aim of raising enough...