Craig Mullins is an American digital painter and one of the leading international concept artists. He started out as a transportation designer and switched to illustration later in life. Mullins works with a variety of mediums for his pieces, doing illustrations and matte paintings on top of his digital works. Some more of his well-known works include cards for the Magic: The Gathering card game, concept art for many popular film titles — Forrest Gump, Jurassic Park, Apollo 13, Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse, Tangled, and others — and video game illustrations for a number of games and franchises. These wide variety of genres lets Mullins’s work take on different forms and themes depending on the situation.
Concept art is an extremely important part of world-building. It gives immediate context to the landscape and the events that have occurred. It brings this imaginary world, that only existed in the mind of its creators, to life. It establishes the background, history, and other coherent qualities. It gives visuals that lets all viewers share in the same created reality. Though the world is fictitious, it becomes real. It takes influence and reference from real life to sell the illusion. It has major influence in the film industry because it’s usually one of the first time creators are seeing what their ideas would actually look like. It acts as visual support that aids in selling the ideas and actually producing the movie, and it sets the tone, mood, characters, style and overall aesthetics of a film.
Mullins is known as the “Father of Digital Painting” and is most well known for his concept designs. The above example is one of his pieces that he did for the video game Fallout 3, a very popular role-playing open world game set during the post-apocalyptic times. Just from the image, the viewer can already get a sense about what this game is. The destruction and monochromatic color scheme already give clues that this once familiar and busy landscape has now been long abandoned due to circumstances. It is science fiction, of course, since it is a recognizable landmark, but the state that it is in is far from reality. Without these images, a post-apocalyptic America could take on any shape or form.
This particular scene comes from BioShock, another retrofuturistic video game series. The line between fiction and reality is clearly drawn, and the outside environment and the state of the world are clearly depicted. The majority of the scene is cast in darker tones with the only bit of light coming through the windows and casting shadows on the interior. The light has a green glow to it, making it seem very artificial. It is a fairly straightforward image depicting the typical life in this world. Though he left transportation design for illustration, there are definitely mechanical elements and inspiration sprinkled about, and not just in this piece either. It gives just enough of a hint at what the world and environment is like outside of this space.
Being able to depict and step into these imaginary worlds are what made the science fiction genre boom, giving the viewer or player a chance to step into a new world that both is and is not our own. It is a chance to look at new perspectives and become something that has never been before. It is people like Craig Mullins who breathe life into the genre for all to enjoy and hopefully find connection with.
Works Referenced
“BioShock.” BioShock Wiki, bioshock.fandom.com/wiki/BioShock.
Mullins, Craig. Goodbrush, www.goodbrush.com/.
Neo, Mr Geo. “Craig Mullins.” Illustrators' Lounge, 12 Sept. 2019,
illustratorslounge.com/concept-art/craig-mullins/.
“What Is the Purpose of Concept Art in Films?” Mages, 30 Jan. 2019,
mages.edu.sg/blog/what-is-the-purpose-of-concept-art-in-films.
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