Concept art plays a key role in designing games, helping studios visualize and craft the world before it ever gets put into code. As development continues, the art team continues to refine the aesthetics of the world and its characters, providing images to inspire the team and the outside world alike.

Lots of concept art at Bethesda is created by hand from scratch, such as the piece pictured at the top of this article. Artists summon these images from their imaginations, and the scenes and situations they craft are used by the rest of the team as they shape the game.

In addition to this approach, Bethesda employs another method to craft art for the game by completing paint-overs of existing screens to create a new piece of art. In essence, it is concept art created in the opposite direction from normal -- from a final in-game asset into a artistic visualization of the moment from the game. Bethesda was kind enough to give us a glimpse into this fascinating process, but our version is sped up so we can see the whole creation process in one brief video, complete with a new piece of music from Skyrim composed by Jeremy Soule.The concept artist creating the piece is Ray Lederer.

For more on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, including extensive interviews with game director Todd Howard, details on the game's new engine, and the ability to translate the back cover of this month's Game Informer, visit our Skyrim hub, linked from the image below.

Enjoy the video!