Fury Road

A road warrior-ey sketch from 2010

Saw Fury Road this past weekend!
I’m a huge Mad Max/Road Warrior fan and while I think Road Warrior was a “tighter” movie overall, I think Fury Road is probably the best action movie to come along in years. I think the movie is a sci-fi/fantasy nerd’s dream since it opens up the world and gives you little glimpses  of story without explaining a ton. In that way it still feels like an 80′s fantasy movie as opposed to one of the current (boring) superhero blockbusters that seem to come out every other week.

Part of that may have come from the fact that one of the writers is also one of the artists! (Brendan McCarthy. His site’s down right now but here’s some of his work for Fury Road from 1997. (movie’s been in production for a loooong time) Here's some of his work for the movie:

Also I loved the character of “Furiosa”. She belongs up there with other amazing action movie women like Ripley and Sarah Connor!

The art direction for the movie was a healthy mix of Road Warrior, Brom and Heavy Metal (comic or music, pick one! Or both!) Furiosa’s makeup and the “War Boys” were very reminiscent of Brom’s paintings for the Dark Age RPG. Oh and throw in a little dash of Phil Hale’s pale jumping guys in there as well.

Here's some of Brom's work that reminded me of some of the imagery in Fury Road:

Anyway, I highly recommend it! It's a rare occurrence that a reboot/sequel of a series from 34 years ago is actually good!

Live drawing on the Gigantic stream today!

If you want to see me draw a community created "Gigantic" character on the fly then tune in to our stream today around 3pm PST. Here's the link:

http://www.twitch.tv/gogigantic

Here's the reddit thread talking about the stream:
http://www.reddit.com/r/gigantic/comments/36iyl3/the_next_gigantic_stream_a_heros_tale_there_and/

Should be fun! (or nerve wracking)

UPDATE!
Here's a link to the now archived video stream so you can watch it at your leisure. It went well, designed some fun/goofy characters, talked about art, and of course our game.
http://www.twitch.tv/gogigantic/b/661426254 

GDC 2015

I'll be helping out my team at GDC this year. So if you're in the game industry and are attending come check out GIGANTIC and say "hi!"

Meet Mozo!

PAX South is going on right now, and one of the new heroes I created for our game Gigantic was revealed!

There's a bit of cat, rabbit, and monkey in her design

She’s a wannabe wizard that doesn’t really realize the amount of firepower she wields! Her official bio line from our site: “Mozo amassed a collection of magic wands — sometimes without the prior owners' consent.”

So basically she’s a wand thief! hehehe.

I had a ton of fun coming up with her design. I’ll be sure to go into that process on here in a separate post.

Here's links to the other talented artists that brought her to life (so she can then subsequently kill you:
Modeled by Ted Lockwood, animated by Jo Han, and effects by Shen Spurgeon.

Mozo, annoying the crap out everyone on the opposing team

Guardians of Middle Earth Concepts Part 2

Another classic LOTR character I got to re-imagine for GoME was the Balrog. I tried some other demon designs, keeping in line with the look from the film version, but it's hard to do a new version of a creature that's now part of a classic scene. I think my designs kept the flavor of the original just with larger proportions better suited for the game. I told myself that this isn't THE Balrog but another of it's kind.

Please form your fingers into the
"devil horns" hand gesture when
viewing these concepts.

Final design for the Balrog summon

One of the other responsibilities I had on GoME was helping with effects concepting. I really like doing effects concepts, it's more about impact and action than design and anatomy. Though coming up with visually dynamic shapes is still "designing", but its' different than something like armor or weapon concepting. The concepts can be looser since they're just there to give the effects artists and animators a jumping off point.

Bright and celestial effects for Gandalf and Galadriel.

Weird, unnerving Gollum effects.

Elemental Agandaur and Lugbol effects.

Spooky Barrow Wight effects.

Finally here's a collection of sketches that just didn't make the cut. Most of the characters in GoME are from the films or the LOTR books. I came up with some other fun characters but they didn't really get past the sketch stage!

I will never tire of sticking arrows into characters.

I hope you all aren't sick of Orcs, Dwarves and Elves just yet.... I have TONS of work for Shadows of Mordor to post in the future!

Guardians of Middle Earth Concepts Part 1

I took my sweet time and finally added a bunch of the work I did on Guardians of Middle Earth (from here on in, referred to as "GoME") to my website. Figure I'll feature a few concepts here and on my tumblr over the next few posts. I worked on GoME for a bit in between a cancelled Batman project and Shadows of Mordor.

It was an interesting project to work on, as I'd never worked on a "MOBA" before (multiplayer online battle arena for you non-gamers out there), but as with all official LOTR stuff there are restrictions to what you can come up with. All of the characters were already designed from the films for the most part, we just had to "puff up" their proportions and colors a bit so they were more readable in very chaotic action, and from an isometric camera angle.

Overall the work I did on GoME was a tiny step towards what I'm doing now on Gigantic, boiling characters down to simple elements for a clean and dynamic visual read. The biggest difference though is that LOTR is still a realistically depicted world, whereas Gigantic is a fully stylized world.

First off... one of my favorite characters from LOTR, Gandalf the Grey! He really lives up to his name since he was literally a grey blob until I suggested giving him a non-canonical potion vial, add some other colors to his robes and really emphasize that impressive beard! (though in the final game he's still pretty much a grey blob)

Please say "Gandalf" in the whiniest Frodo voice when you look at this image.

Another fun character I got to work on was Treebeard. I had to use the film version as a jumping off point. (which was fine because he was great looking in the movie) I was happy with some of those head designs. I can draw organic tree people all day...

Did we really need extended Treebeard scenes in the movies? SNOOOZE.

Canis and Rem were two original characters for the game. They never made the final cut but they were really fun to work on. They're "skinchangers" like Beorn. These two siblings turn into wolves, rather than bears.

This guy doesn't care about stupid "no shirt, no shoes, no service" rules.

It was fun to keep some of the design elements from the human form in the beast form.

I referenced native dress of Turkey and of the Roma people for her costume.

I wanted to be sure Rem's beast form looked more intelligent than her brother's.

More trees! Here's some stuff for the Ents that you can summon in the game.

It was fun coming up with different forms for the Ents. The team really like #4's
root legs.

Final designs

More in the next GoME post!