Carrie Watkins
Pixel Art Illustrations
2023
Created for a paid research position under Dr. Alex Wellerstien.
On the right are landscapes created for Oregon Road '83, an ongoing video game collaboration between Stevens students and Professor Alex Wellerstein exploring what the United States might look like in the event of a hypothetical nuclear war. I worked alongside other artists, using assigned references and a style guide to create postcard-style pre-war and “destroyed” images of explorable locations.
On the left is the resulting concept art from my personal research into the possibility and appearance of a game engaging the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. I used photo references, written accounts, and the illustrations and reflections by survivors found in the book Unforgettable Fire: Drawings by Atomic Bomb Survivors, 1977.
I was primarily interested in proposing an art style that communicated the scale of tragedy without excessive gore, which I felt would be overstepping as an American studying an attack by my own government. While I value the experience, I think pursuing such a project further would require intentional collaboration with Japanese artists and scholars.