The Legend of Kyrandia series
The Legend of Kyrandia series

* Part 1: The Kyrandia triology: storylines

* Part 2: Background of Kyrandia I

* Part 3: Three designers

* Part 4: The Legend of Kyrandia sound files

* Part 5: Westwood Studios


The designers of the three games include dozens of people. GN selected three of them in order to add some info about them and the games: two graphic artists and a composer.

Rick Parks (Robert Richter Parks)

Especially the art of Rick Parks was important for the Kyranidia games, as he was the art director and lead artist on the first game, and lead artist on the second one.8 Though he isn't credited for the third game, a logo from a preview pack bears his name (see here).

Parks, a painter and graphic artist, was born on November 5 1950 in Passadena (Ca). He entered Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1969 and majored in art.

His paintings were commissioned by noted individuals such as Parry Thomas (banker) and Donald Trump (president) and owned by celebreties Siegfried and Roy (magicians) and Sylvester Stallone (actor).9 His work also includes portraits of politicians and other celebreries like Albert Einstein (genius) or Mickey (mouse). His drinking glass of Mickey Mouse was admired in the Amiga community.

The woman in the front is Cindy "Zanthia" Chinn. Standing behind her (with cap) is Rick Parks. Chinn was the lead character artist for Zanthia (responsible for setting her graphic style, designing her wardrobe and producing most of her animations).10
During the late 80's and 90's he created, besides his paintings, artwork for various games by Westwood Studios.11

Joseph B. Hewitt IV, in his blog "working as designed", writes about Parks:

"Brett and Louis (Westwood's founders, Brett Sperry and Louis Castle) told him they really couldn't afford to pay him what he was worth, but they worked out a deal where Rick would get time off to do other projects because he really wanted to do work on the computer because he thought it was so fun."12

and he ads elsewhere:

"One of things he was really good at was color, those bright, dramatic colors in a palette limited to 256 colors (minus what was fixed for the GUI or other on screen effects). Remember too, back then we were also limited to the number of color gun values, 0 to 64, or even only 0 to 32 on some systems.13

In october 1997 Parks was diagnosed with leukemia during a routine physical, and he passed a way a few months later, on Dec. 15th 1997.14

Louis Castle decided to honor Parks in a way that reflected the key moments of their careers:

"I thought of UNLV, and I thought what a great opportunity to create a scholarship for people interested in marrying the arts and technology. So we designed this interdisciplinary scholarship [The Rick Parks Scholarship] specifically to remember Rick and to encourage people with curious minds to marry technology and arts."15

"Lands of Lore: Guardians of Destiny" includes besides the didication a short video to Parks "in loving memory".

See notes here.

(c) All artwork copyright Westwood Studios
(c) Text 2020