This month's cover of GAME NEWS features the art of William Carman, whose cover art on Strategic Simulations Inc. computer games such as Ringside Seat, Questron, Reforger '88, and Breakthrough in the Ardennes is familiar to many 1of you. Fantasy illustrations and art are what Carman is especially interested in pursuing. In fact, he's moved to the east coast to escape the more hectic life in California and to concentrate on illustrations and painting, not design or graphic art. Yes. He did say it was more hectic in California than in Virginia, You see in California, he lived and worked in Cupertino, which is located in Silicon Valley. In Virginia he lives in Callao, a small town "about an hour from anything you've ever heard of." For a long time, Carman was intrigued with what he saw on the covers of fantasy books, but he continued to read the comic books he enjoyed. "I think the thing that first started me in fantasy was the visual aspect of it. Maybe I was brought into it through comic books. I loved comic books when I was a kid, I tried to draw out of comics, and, I'd do comic drawings and things like that. And then I started seeing covers of pocket books,, things like Frank' Frazetta, beautiful things. I started to copy all of those things,... During high school, I kind of put all those things aside.... Once in a while I did a cartoon for the school paper or something, but it was kind of put aside. Then after high school, it started to come to me, I really liked to draw. I thought I could make something of this, people told me I probably could, so I kept doing it. And then I started reading some of the books that I'd been seeing the covers of, and that way I really got interested in it." The man who encouraged his interest in fantasy was James C. Christensen, his professor at Brigham Young University in Utah, and a fantasy artist himself. "Let me -tell you, he's (Christensen) in the middle of western art out there with cowboys and Indians and horses and things, and he's not doing any of it. We'd talk about books and then he'd show me his work. I'd get all excited, say 'boy, that is really something.' That was where a fire really started in me." After college, Carman was working in a temporary position at Ford Aeropace in California, where a friend recommended his work to Louis Saekow at Strategic Simulations Inc. (SSI). The first cover Carman did for SSI was Ringside Seat, a game about boxing, Both Ford and SSI liked Carmad's work and each offered him a full time position. Carman chose SSI. "There was much more room to grow with him (Saekow). With Ford it was just kind of a dead end, and he gave me a better offer." The covers Carman did while employed at SSI range from sports and general interest games such as Ringside Seat to roleplaying games (Questron) to war games (Break through in the Ardennes). Carman worked mostly from photographs for detailing on the tanks and military items. "Louie had a lot of reference material, and we would go over concepts together, Sometimes wed even do the drawings together. We just worked well together. Because of his knowledge and reference material ... I was able to do the things I wasn't familiar with such as the military covers. On those covers, some of them were done in two to three days for a full, large cover... We were working more than full time actually. But that wasn't the problem, I felt I was doing a lot of things besides the covers, a lot of design, a lot of production work, things that I just didn't want to do. And you know, the illustration work was reward enough for me. I had to get out and try my hand at just being an illustrator." Before Carman was able to concentrate on drawing, he spent about a year in Provo, Utah as the director of an art agency. While there he did more graphic and design work, but he also accumulated the capital to move to the east coast. "And now I'm doing all illustration, all painting work, which is real hard because I'm not established here at all. It's hard to get going, but things are starting to happen now, so it's making me happy. Who knows? After I get things going I might move back to California. There's places I could live where it's not so hectic." For now. the east coast has it's own appeal. "It's beautiful out here, though, the countryside is the kind of countryside I like, with the rolling green hills, and the forests that spark my imagination more than anything. I can walk out in the forest and I can see a painting. I can say, this is what's going to happen here, these elves are coming out of here and this thing is over here and this.... It helps tremendously for my house to be out, isolated where I can look out the window, and there's the edge of the forest. It's just very visual and lush and right there ...... Does this interest in fantasy extend to fantasy role-playing games? No it doesn't, even though his teacher at Brigham Young is a role-player with an extensive collection of fantasy miniatures. "I've had friends who have played, but mostly I'm a reader and a looker, and I don't play When I actually have some spare time I draw, or I play music. I find it (fantasy) just a great avenue to imagine and I can sit down and listen to music and just let myself go and I'm in my own fantasy world. I don't have to play a game, or I don't have to read. I just sit and make up my own." Carman doesn't play any of the computer games he drew covers for either. "My knowledge of computers is miniscule. I'm not a very technical person as far as that goes. I'm an artistic kind of person. Computers and I don't get along very well." And the future? "I've pretty much decided that I don't want to be a designer or production artist. Some design I would enjoy doing,... if I could illustrate with it or something, but as far as being a straight designer, that's for somebody else. Illustration is what I like to do." Back to Table of Contents -- Game News #11 To Game News List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1986 by Dana Lombardy. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com