Cindy Wentzell Creative

“The worlds created with the visionary focus of a likeminded gaming team are lush, harsh, odd, intense, massive,
spectacular, enchanting, and memorable. Once immersed, it’s hard to extricate oneself from the action
and hours can pass in seemingly just minutes. No wonder the number of gamers worldwide is growing with
astounding rapidity each year.

While employed at Kinetic Arts, Inc., subcontracting at Looking Glass Technologies , and contracting at Legend Entertainment
I produced artwork for a number of shipped games, ranging from educational/kids to humorous/fantasy spoofs to sports
to science fiction.
Upon first starting in the game art industry I used the simple but quite effective drawing software Deluxe Paint. The PC adventure games I worked on in the early 1990’s consisted of a mere 16 color palette, as many digital artists can attest to.
I manipulated pixels in magnification mode alongside the original image to produce the best readability for the small screenspace allotted for art on each game screen. To work with such a limited palette was quite beneficial in understanding color control. Dithering pixels to create ”new” colors was a trick used to “magically” but technically stretch the palette. 256 color palettes (minus a designated amount of colors that the developers needed for the rest of the game) became standard as time and technology progressed. DPaint gave way to Adobe Photoshop which became my standard software tool and continues to stay fresh and relevant. Animator Pro was the animation software used for the simple animations found throughout each game I worked on and eventually was replaced by Animator Studio and 3D Studio/Max.

Working daily alongside and with game developers, the amount of artwork that can be created for each game is beyond
staggering...it’s quite a buzz to bring a game to life from sketches and ideas with just a tablet, pen, and mouse."

Game Titles Shipped:
Wheel Of Time
Flight Unlimited
Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon
Treasure Cove
System Shock
British Open Golf
Star Control III
Shannara
Mission Critical
Mario’s Time Machine
Habitactics
Hodj ‘n’ Podj
Death Gate
Super Hero League of Hoboken
Spellcasting 301: Spring Break
Gateway I and II
Eric the Unready
Companions of Xanth