Born in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1972, Antonov got his start in the video game business as an artist. He worked on Redneck Rampage (1997) and its various mission packs, followed by a Quake II expansion and Kingpin: Life of Crime (1999), with its gritty, crumbling tenement locations. He started working with Valve whilst Half-Life 2 (2004) was in development and quickly became the game's art director. He spent a lot of time looking at locations in his native Bulgaria, as well as other Eastern European countries, to serve as reference points for the game's sprawling City 17, the neighbouring settlement of Ravenholm and more. Half-Life 2's recent 20th anniversary saw Antonov interviewed about his work on the game.
Antonov was feted for the incredible world design of Half-Life 2 and was hired by Arkane Studios to work on the city of Dunwall for Dishonored (2012). Antonov again knocked it out of the park, creating a realistic, immersive steampunk city of crumbling buildings and diesel-punk-ish brutalism. Antonov then moved into consultancy work, advising on the visual design of Fallout 4 (2015), Dishonored 2 (2016), DOOM (2016) and Prey (2017). He returned to full-time art direction with "Project DG," a game for Eschatology Entertainment, a company he himself had co-founded in 2022.
Visual and graphic design is a key component of video games, but most games are made by art teams and committees. Antonov was unusual in putting his unique touch on a game's environments that was immediately recognisable as his own. Anyone playing Half-Life 2 or its expansions, or Dishonored or its sequel, knows immediately they are in an "Antonovian" landscape. Hopefully he did enough work on "Project DG" that we'll be able to spend at least some more time with one of his worlds.
A great artist who specialised in creating worlds that fused the fantastical and the realistic, he will be missed.
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