Vyle is the professional pseudonym for concept artist, art director and designer David Levy. He works primarily in the gaming industry and is perhaps most noted for his work on Prince of Persia. He has also done work in the film industry.

Vyle seems to work primarily digitally, usually in Photoshop and sometimes back and forth between Photoshop and 3-D graphics. His site includes “tutorials” in the form of short movies that fade through a progression of images from various stages of the work. (Some of them require the latest version of DIVX, others are in AVI.) Among them is a short movie of the process for creating the image at left, bottom.

His simultaneously loose and detailed style reminds me a bit of artists like Craig Mullins and Feng Zhu (also here).

The galleries on Vyle’s site feature corporate work, notably gaming concept and environment designs, but as I often do, I find the most interesting work in the images done for his own amusement to personal projects in the “Homework”, Speedpaintings” and “Archives” sections.

“Speedpainting” is a fun idea and is common among concept artists who work in digital painting. The flexibility, plasticity and quick color mixing available in digital painting allows very rapid application of color, and artists often create “timed” paintings as a challenge to themselves, and occasionally as friendly rivalry amongst their colleagues (see my post on Barontieri).

In Vyle’s case, his practice of speedpainting pays off in the freedom and spontaneous feeling carried into his more fully realized work. I think it also helps artists in his profession to stay limber and creative when they are very often called on to have “imagination on tap”.