SimCity: The Three Biggest Influences on Art Style

With work featured in the MoMA, Scotland’s Royal Museum and Helsinki’s City Art Museum, Ocean Quigley is an accomplished artist whose early ambition was to not just “paint the world as it is,” but to also “get what it means.” While his landscape paintings may be more reflective of his earlier years in a Costa Rica rainforest and on the island of Maui, Quigley’s current role as Creative Designer for the new SimCity finds him tasked with not just painting “the world,” but also to paint “your world” – and when you think about what SimCity is, “your world” could be anything. Whether that means making a modern metropolis or a destitute cluster of tenements full of homeless people on fire, EA and Maxis are aiming to make the next SimCity a sequel that matters – and that means giving you the tools to bring whatever kind of city your noble (or demented) mind comes up with to life.

We recently had a chance to speak with Quigley about the look and feel of the new SimCity – and the three biggest influences on the overall art style of the game. Read on. You might be surprised!