process
With over 15 years in Editorial, and another 10 in Gaming, I've worked with many talented Creative/Art Directors. Working alongside some of the best and brightest has informed my own visual development philosophy. I've found there isn't a one-size-fits-all "best" approach, so over the years I've tried to be flexible, and employ methods that work best for the project’s staff and schedule. In this section I'll take you through some of the projects I've worked on, and explain the roles I've played in better detail.
Octane, key art painting
Call of duty: ghosts
On Call of Duty: Ghosts, I served as Art Director on a number of multiplayer maps. I'll start by saying I'm a gameplay-first AD. I'm a firm believer in clear "playlanes", making sure I'm piling in details and landmarking where it serves the player best. My other strength, and I think this comes from my illustration background- is storytelling. Our brief from this map was "try to do something in Las Vegas, because there's a single player level there, maybe we can share assets". Armed with that, the map designer and I discussed taking the map "off the strip", and exploring the seedier side of Las Vegas. From there, I form a story that makes sense to me, something I can get across with the set dress. So first I want to show that this area has suffered a massive economic collapse. Every building has a "for lease" or "going out of business" sign. The gas station is out of rations, FEMA trucks abound. From there, we hint at government intervention- massive curfew billboards and posters all over the map. Finally- the people have been abandoned by the state, and only scavengers remain. Military vehicles lay dormant, half burried in the sand. There is anti-government graffiti on most buildings. The most well fortified structures have sleeping bags, canned water- one roof is full of buckets collect rainwater. So with this story in mind, I create a key art painting to get buy-in from all stakeholders. Once approved, it was time to move on to specific, game-play critical landmark direction.
The Pawnshop
My job is to give Environment artists clean, actionable concepts. I love a good gestural "vibe" painting, but when I work I want to be as clear as possible with the direction. So when I do a "Creative Goals" callout sheet, I start by taking in game screenshots of the actual geometry, so I can craft an accurate rendering. Obviously Google Streetview has loads of awesome reference, but I wanted some fresh, clear reference, so most of the above photos I took in downtown Madison. Note the signage progression- "for lease", "curfew", and finally, "send help".
Auto body shop
Again, I start with multiple views of the structure, find reference as a solid starting point, and start bringing the location to life. Most of the photo ref was taken downtown, and I'm doing lots of big blasts of brushed/colorful type to catch the eye and wake up those neutral colored walls.
pinkiees
This was a very fun location to bring to life- I loved doing the signage and color-theme. I went to school for Graphic Design, so I'm always excited to own all of the fictional signage/branding in my levels. Really loved making the enormous Pinkiees neon sign that has collapsed through the roof and into the center of the club- and through some creative scripting, we were able to capture some amazing disco ball lighting on the characters!
The Grill
Love the lighting and mood here- when we knew this was going to be a diner I immediately wanted to reference the iconic Hawthorne Grill, made famous from it's appearance in Pulp Fiction. The set dress is fun, the natural lighting is believable, and the subtle reflection in the linoleum is as nice break from all of the sand and visual noise found elsewhere in the map.
The Alley
So much of video game art direction is taking very abstract geometry, and trying to imbue it with the essence of realism and credibility. Almost any video game level is a lie- things with architectural relevance are very rarely conducive to good game play. So it's a rare treat when I inherit a layout that feels pretty real! It's a simple thing, but I wanted this alley to feel functional, lived in, and still tell a story. I know most of these cues just turn into color and shape for the majority of players, but I believe the more credible the foundation, the easier it is for players to become immersed.
Main Street
As the environments are firming up, I shift my attention to lighting and VFX. Landing the right mood/atmosphere is critical to making a memorable scene. We land at final lighting and VFX with multiple paintovers, photo sources, and lots of discussions with design to verify we are protecting game play. From there, we have a few rolling rounds of feedback, where I comb through the level taking screenshots and doing redline notes, and we polish until we run out of runway. I feel Octane is a great example of what a motivated, driven small team can accomplish, and I'm proud of the work we've done here.
state of chaos
State of Chaos is a character collection, turn based RPG developed by Shiver Entertainment and published by Nexon America. It was my first project in the Studio Art Director role. I found it to be a massively fun challenge, and the experience taught me so much about driving a production from genesis to final. Along the way, I wore many different hats- creative/world builder, marketing collaborator, feature innovator/driver, game designer, outsource manager, negotiator and recruiter- but of course, my favorite hat was always art direction. I wanted to share some paintings from pre production through landing on our core look , and talk about what I was thinking about/going for along the way.
Wild Wastelanders
When I arrived on the project, the desire from the studio head was an ownable, unique look for the game. I knew we were doing post apocalypse, or at the least, civilization in decline, so one of my first thoughts was finding something really punk- landing somewhere between Borderlands and Mad Max, with a little Tank Girl/Boneface sensibility thrown in. These 3 gents, for example, are a trio of madmen in possession of some Yo Gabba Gabba style costumes.
Proportion exploration
Being a mobile game, even one with it's sights on a AAA look, I was concerned too much detail may get lost/be muddy on device, so I took a character we all liked (apocalypse lumberjack!), and broke him down to simple, clean shapes that read well small. Ultimatly we went realistic, but I'm convinced this approach would have also yelided good results!
Environment study
Early env painting-I was looking for something that felt vaguely "Hanna-Barbera Thundarr the Barbarian" something familiar, but new. In this setup, I was imagining the game from a fixed, 2 and a half D perspective, where we could employ parallax in the background, and blurry forground elements.
progression
Like many FTP games, we had base building and upgrading components to our design. This quick comp was a suggestion for the player's primary mode of transportation upgrade path. I made sure it was very modular, so we could start with the high poly "final" form, and then strip away details to easily spin off the other 3 models.
progression ii
Again, this is an example of a prop creative goals sheet- I'm laying out the modular pieces we need to create a base with 10 unique levels of upgrade. Things move fast in mobile development, this was probably a 2 hour sketch to find appropriate ref and sketch out the model progression.
Weird dudes
This was the result of me going down a really southern-fried-wasteland rabbit hole. Rockabilly warriors with hand painted textures- serching for a look that could cut through all the noise in the app store!
WEIRD DUDES ii
Ghost cyborg motorcycle riders- pre production was filled with a lot of John Carpenter synthesizers.
Scumbag Apocalypse
Our publisher had expressed a desire to see a more grounded, realistic take on the end of the world. I thought a look we haven't seen too much of in games/media was some real "civilization in decline" fiction. A setting somewhere between Grand Theft Auto and The Last of Us. The neon lights still work, but the trash doesn't run. Now when you look at those titles, they are very dry- the characters look like real people. And our players may not want to spend money to unlock a normal, dirty guy. So I felt leaning into a gang fiction would be a good way to visually group our characters, and build an outlaw fiction into the game world. "You (the player) are the great uniter- you must travel this city kicking butt and recruiting the best of the best so you can run the city". This idea caught real traction with the publisher, and was ultimatly the direction we took to market.
Gang iteration
These concepts are a bit more polished, as they also act as key art for the publisher. In these concepts I'm showing how clothing color, style of equipment, and material choice can make "realistic characters" feel very different from each other without having to resort to "The Warriors" level of theming.
Chapter illustrations
For our single player campaign, I wanted each story chapter to have some nice art to better draw the player into our world. For this image, my brilliant animator has posed our hirsute hero and created a spin-off model, which I then opened in Marmoset Toolbag to light. After lighting I bring the render into Photoshop to use as a base for my final painting. I first used this technique on CoD: Exo Zombies to generate marketing images. You can see those in greater detail in my reel.
Environment painting
In State of Chaos, each gang has it's own "turf" 3D level to battle in. This is a painting created for the Rollergirls gang. Maybe a little expected, but I love the clear read and punchy color relationships here.
Living city
In State of Chaos, gangs fight for control of a district filled with real players. This was the visual target I created for the team. Models lit in Marmoset, and composited with UI/Post FX in Photoshop- believe it or not we got this working on a phone! Thanks for visiting, I hope you've enjoyed the read!