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By Glen Herbert
Brock Grossman ‘12 is a concept artist and designer. If you don’t know quite what that is, you’re not alone. It’s not a role that we think of much, or that gets a lot of press. He works with producers of video games. “Let’s say they’re including a city in the game,” he says, “and they need to know what the buildings look like. I’m the one who would do the sketches and designs and drawings and 3-D models. And then they build it into the game.”
The game controller directs the players’ movements through the world of the game, while Brock is one of the people who creates that world: the backgrounds and the buildings; the things the characters hold, or drive, or fly; what they look like and how they move; who they are, and who they might meet.
If you haven’t seen a video game in a while, it’s fair to say that you’d be impressed with the kind of work being done. While games have their antecedents in Pong and Asteroids, the creators of today’s games, more often than not, look to other sources for artistic inspiration. People like Frank Frazetta and Mœbius, and the fantasy artists of the 60s and 70s. “I draw from a lot of that earlier stuff because I like fantasy art and science fiction,” says Brock. Rather than pixelated blips jumping on things, those artists created complex scenes and narratives. They were storytellers.
And that’s what Brock does: he tells stories. If you google him (or click here) you’ll see lots of pieces, almost all of which he’s done as practice or simply for himself. “A lot of the stuff that I post online is my personal artwork. I don’t post stuff from my job because it’s under contract. But my personal stuff, in my portfolio—and what I do in my spare time—Is what I’m proud of I guess. The personal expression side of art.”
It’s easy to get a bit lost in all of it. These are truly fantastic images in every sense of the word: a ship, a robot, a raptor perched overlooking a burning city that is both futuristic and historical at the same time. In contrast, there’s also a view from the window of his apartment in Vancouver, one he says that he made soon after arriving there. It’s utterly realistic, and you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a photograph, though set in sepia tones with a beautiful use of light that characterises all of his work. His creations are complex, skilled, and frankly beautiful. (Though he admits “a lot of the art that I do is a bit darker.”)
You can see his professional work in the game Borderlands 3, for one. He has also illustrated Magic: The Gathering cards. And as with any field of art, what he creates is part of a much larger artistic conversation. For those coming at it cold, it can be unclear where to look. I ask him what the work represents, and within it that makes both his work distinctive. “I think the design sensibility,” he says. “Taste is really important. There are some artists that everyone draws inspiration from, and I think that’s interesting, because each artist has different preferences and styles that they work in.”
His entry point for what he’s doing professionally was the art he encountered growing up in Toronto. “Art was always a constant for me,” he says. “I was inspired by street art, artists that were doing murals and those kinds of things.” His work—these feel like very urban forms—can seem at odds with the fact that he attended RLC. But he did. Brock arrived in Grade 7, first enrolling that year as a day student. His father, Chris, ran Moose FM, the radio station in Muskoka. “I was going back and forth to Muskoka quite a bit because he had to work up here, and we had a house in Toronto. And because my parents were both really busy with work it sort of came about that RLC would be a good place for me to go to school.” The decision to board came later, but it worked. “A lot of my friends were boarders, and I think my parents wanted me to have that experience of growing up in Muskoka rather than in the city.”
Brock stayed through graduation, becoming the definition of an RLC lifer. “It was a really good place to go to high school,” he says, “because you’re sort of sheltered from a lot of potentially bad situations you could get yourself into in, say, Toronto. I think it was a really good place—it was quiet and nurturing. I liked being a boarder because you end up getting really close to people, because you’re living together.”
His interest in art was encouraged by Janet Copeland, the art teacher at the time. “I think she recognised that I was passionate about it right from the get go. She was very encouraging and gave me a lot of opportunities to do art, and she was really supportive.”
When I ask him what he felt RLC gave him, he answers “patience.” “One of my regrets is I wish I pulled more from the nature,” he says, “thinking of artists like the Group of Seven … there’s lots of great landscape. … I think I took that for granted.” As a teenager, there were other concerns, and anyway a lot going on. But the aesthetic of the landscape resonates, and you can see hints of it in the backgrounds of some of the images he creates.
After RLC Brock enrolled at SCAD, the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia. “When I went to college,” he says, “I didn’t have a super clear idea of what I wanted to do at the time. But then I met some friends, and meeting people, I sort of discovered the video game design career path."
It’s a path that is growing, and considerably bigger than some might think. Per a recent industry report, gaming revenues have exceeded those of movies and sports combined, netting $184 billion in 2022. The audience, too, is larger and growing. The number of gamers is expected to grow to 3.6 billion by 2025. … 38 percent of gamers are between the ages of 18 and 34 years, and 16 percent are older than 55.
Grossman’s work is a reminder that everything we see in stores, on television, in video games, is designed. Which means people sit down in front of a blank screen and create something that wasn’t there before. Brock is one of those people. I spoke with him while we were in the midst of Closing Day prep, and I asked if he’d have any advice for the students who are at RLC today. “I guess I’d say just take advantage of the environment that you’re in. The outtrips, the scenery … RLC is a really unique place to go to high school. Just appreciate it for what it is."
Brock Grossman '12 is currently on staff at Microsoft’s Coalition Studio, a flagship Xbox Game Studio. He lives in Vancouver.
