Occasionally, a given game or franchise has the kind of pull, the kind of following, which spurs its fans to express themselves through the appreciation of said fandom. They create works of art inspired by the object of their obsession. That is how fan art is born, and is fairly common.
However, sometimes, these creative people band together with others who feel, think and act likewise, and create something truly special and unique. Rockstar sometimes publishes collections of fan art on its website and in one such post, brought attention to a work-in-progress project which planned to release a comprehensive compendium of GTA V fan art in the form of an art magazine.
Titled "What Happens In The Dark", the art zine was in its preliminary stages at the time, but undoubtedly the publicity Rockstar's endorsement granted them helped much in the way of getting the community's attention. The GTA V fan community is absolutely massive, with plenty of up and coming artists in its ranks. So following Rockstar's post, people of great artistic talent came in droves to have their work displayed in the art zine.
Well, at long last the art zine is complete, and it outperformed any and all expectations. The art found within is varied and of an astronomical standard, plus there is a lot of it. What Happens In The Dark is 74 pages long, with some double-paged pieces of art, though usually one per page.
The works encompass a number of styles, themes and tones, which make the experience of perusing the magazine a colorful one. At risk of sounding pretentious, despite being based on a video game (which in my personal opinion should not be an excluding factor, but public opinion is against me), much of this could and should be considered high art.
You can take a look at the whole art zine here.
