Yesterday the creative mind behind SKYRIM and Fallout 3, Adam Adamowicz fell in his battle with cancer. Mr. Adamowicz was the lead artist behind the entire artistic concept of the two modern day gaming masterpieces Fallout 3 and SKYRIM, giving those worlds life and personality. Everything from coin operated fallout shelters to dragons atop snowy peaks was first visualized and created in the mind of Adam Adamowicz.In a quote from Vault Diary he stated, "Visualizing all of the aspects of a make believe world is quite an educational experience. On any given day I could be simultaneously learning about multiple topics, from motorcycle engines to 50's fashion design. It's kind of like writing and filming a National Geographic documentary film for an actual sci-fi world. For this job, I think the more you read on a wide variety of subjects, the better equipped you are to create depth and realism, especially for a fantasy setting. The fantastic that's grounded in real world elements and then elaborated and exaggerated upon, seem to work the best, and create a solid jumping off point. This often creates fertile ground for generating additional story elements that can influence costumes, machines, and even motives for the various personalities inhabiting a made up world.

Seeing Syd Mead lecture in SF was an incredibly profound lesson on design. During the Q&A I asked him how far he went on a design to make it technically believable. His advice was 'to design with the story in mind and stay consistent with it'. Hence I learned that the Sulacco from Aliens is essentially a massive gun in space with a big nuclear reactor at one end which beautifully fits the theme of space marines exploring a planet infested with deadly hostile aliens. That answer freed me obsessing over minutiae that diverges story-wise, and focus on the broad strokes that propel the story. The addition of ensuing consistent minutiae would give it richness."

The industry and the world has truly lost a great visionary and no matter what the next Fallout or Oblivion game will be, it will be a little less wonderful because of it.