Machinarium is a point-and-click adventure game with a unique look; the product of hand drawn environments and characters by artists from Amanita Design.

The game, as far as I understand it, involves moving a small robot through a series of environments in search of something. The images have a wonderful quality of texture, imaginative design and a sense of atmosphere and age.

There is a trailer on the website for the game, and, despite the disclaimer that has been there for months, there is also a playable online demo as well as a downloadable demo available from the Amanita Design Blog.

There are also large wallpaper size images available on the Machinarium site. (I can’t give you direct links because the site is in Flash.)

Last fall, before the game’s release, Boing Boing featured an article with preliminary concept sketches by Jakub Dvorský and Adolf Lachman, as well as finished screen captures from the game.

I believe Adolf Lachman is the lead artist. You can find more of his work here.

Like many young boys, I developed a fascination with trains when I quite young, and never completely lost it as an adult. I still find trains and train travel fascinating and possessed of their own aesthetic; huge gleaming machines, spouting grease and sparks, barreling through the night on slivery rails, carrying freight, passengers and the imagination of little boys to far away places.

Terence Tenison Cuneo was a British artist known for his depictions of trains, accurate, and romantic, futuristic and nostalgic, precise and painterly.

Cuneo started as an illustrator and then became a war artist and illustrator for the Illustrated London News in France. He came to wide notice as official artist at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.

His parents were artists who met in Paris while studying with American ex-patriate James Whistler. Cuneo himself studied at the Chelsea Polytechnic and the Slade School of Art.

Cuneo painted landscapes, portraits, battle scenes and exotic animals; but was noted for his portrayal of industrial subjects — tanks, rockets, mines, dams, factories and, most notably, trains and railways.

He painted numerous posters and promotional images for British Railways and other railroads. In 1967 he was commissioned by the Science Museum to paint a large scale (20 x 10ft) painting of the Waterloo Station concourse.

The largest images I’ve found for Cuneo are on Art Renewal, though there are only three. Next best is the NSMI museums collection (click through the images on the detail pages for larger versions).

There is a Cuneo Fine Arts and related Cuneo Society website, apparently maintained by members of the family, that have some information and prints available, but the online images are very small.

Cuneo was noted for the quirk of putting a mouse in his paintings, almost as a kind of secondary signature. He also painted a series of whimsical mouse character paintings.

A statue of Cuneo by Phillip Jackson was placed in the main concourse at Waterloo Station; it includes a mouse almost hidden under a book at his feet.