Character concept to illustrate the attitude and style of the “Star Lancers” the heroes that the player characters embody. We created a wardrobe set based on this design.
NPC key art for “Vixoula” the leader and matriarch for the player characters. She’s an explorer, scientist and “space mom” to all the Star Lancers. This art was to be used for dialogue interactions during narrative sequences.
Design notes: I used round, friendly shapes to create that strong, warm feeling of a maternal figure. I was also inspired by sea mammals like dolphins and whales, with their oval, rounded forms. I enjoyed exploring the many different aspects to her character, from her royal lineage with her beautiful hat and shawl, to her newfound role as explorer and scientist. She even is hiding a scar from magical battle damage from the teased cultist enemy faction.
Vis/Dev sketches for Vixoula.
Design notes: I explored many aspects of her character, including the interesting detail that on her home planet she came from an aristocratic lineage and was a singer in the opera. Now, stranded on the planet she became more of an explorer, but retained some aspect of her royal finery. I explored a variety of body types and aspects of her personality through my visual design. The face on the second image captivated the team so we moved forward with that design, one of my favorite things I designed on this project.
Rough sketches for Vixoula’s lab.
Design notes: To contrast with the evil, aggressive technology of the Harvesters I used round, safe, and pleasing shapes for the lab equipment. Vixoula wants to learn rather than destroy so getting inspiration from the “solarpunk” genre proved to be helpful.
Key art image for the playable alien species we called the “Fenri”. The Fenri are a warrior culture that are born to fight and destroy the evil dragons that inhabit their homeworld. They were meant to be the “big guy” race in the player roster, standing well above the human characters.
Vis/dev sketches and concepts for the Fenri playable race.
Design notes: I combined aspects of primates, wolves, and big cats to design this alien species. They are extremely gregarious and charismatic, always ready for action. The females posses glowing “nodules” on their heads which correspond with their emotional state. I really enjoyed developing this species, which were a big hit with the team.
A series of polished style explorations for the human characters in the game. Inspired by some of my favorite anime character designers like Yutaka Minowa and Nobuteru Yuuki. We ultimately went with a simpler style but these pieces were instrumental for me to understand the black ink, cel shaded style we were developing.
WIP art for “Brommit”, another NPC character the players would interact with during missions. He’s a rough around the edges rogue type, with a good sense of humor and bit of a dark side. His little helper-pet “Grubby” is his best friend and listening partner for some very one sided conversations. He also acts as a mechanic for the player’s StormCharger airships.
In the rough sketches exploring the character I tried a few different alien races as well as human characters. I wanted a handsome, but un-refined character type to come across with this NPC.
Concept art for the Harvester Centurion mini-boss.
The Harvesters are an enemy faction that use technology to gain power by way of cyberization. They take body parts and bio-material to fuel their bodies. The Centurion is a multi attack type enemy that can do both melee and ranged damage.
This character helped define the frantic, fast paced combat of the game, very hard to beat!
Concept art for the Harvester Cleric and her minions.
The Harvesters are an enemy faction that use technology to gain power by way of cyberization. They take body parts and bio-material to fuel their bodies. The Centurion is a multi attack type enemy that can do both melee and ranged damage.
The Harvester cleric uses organic bio-fluid to power her radiating healing discs to repair and heal her fellow Harvesters. Her mindless minions swarm and protect her as she slowly brings up the backline to support her armies.
Design notes: I enjoyed using the medical and religious imagery including an evil version of the “caduceus”. Instead of the “do no harm” mantra, the Harvesters motto was to “do the utmost harm”.
Brainstorming sketches and rough concepts for the Harvester enemy faction.
The Harvesters are an enemy faction that use technology to gain power by way of cyberization. They take body parts and bio-material to fuel their bodies. The Centurion is a multi attack type enemy that can do both melee and ranged damage.
I was involved with many aspects of the Harvesters development. From icons and symbols to defining their ranks and roster. They had many interesting aspects to their design and it was very engaging to develop them as an enemy faction.
The Starbear is a creature created by the evil god that resides in the planet, it is not a naturally occurring creature, rather an aberration that intrudes on the landscape. I uses brute force and it’s alien biology to defeat it’s enemies.
Design Notes: I was inspired by bears, rhinos, and dinosaurs to get the right amount of heft and weight for this creature. The iconic star shaped head and crest helped give the creature a focal point in fast paced battles. I also explored it’s attacks and posing in subsequent motion concepts.
Key art created to establish the final look for the character shader. This concept was painted over 3d models to be accurate to the in-game look.
Design Notes: After creating compositional sketches I worked with our animator Lahela Schoessler to get the posing correct for the final paintover. This image was important in setting a visual target for the art direction for the game. The last picture in this gallery is the pre-paintover image of the posed models.
Final look and vis/dev sketches exploring the female face-design for the player characters. We were inspired by certain anime character designers but also my personal art style to create an appealing look for our heroes.
The images at the end of the gallery were from a previous iteration for the female face that we felt could be simplified.
Final look and vis/dev sketches exploring the male face-design for the player characters. We were inspired by certain anime character designers but also my personal art style to create an appealing look for our heroes.
The images at the end of the gallery were from a previous iteration for the female face that we felt could be simplified.
Expression studies to illustrate the range of facial rig we felt was necessary to achieve the appealing animated look of the game.
These concepts were instrumental for building the characters correctly so they could achieve this range of motion.
Final bodytype concepts and roughs for the male and female player characters. These were also the templates for outsourcing wardrobe concepts for customization.
Design Notes: I tried to retain some naturalism while still simplifying and streamlining the forms. Using my knowledge of anatomy, weight and proportion I was able to find an good middle ground for our two human bodytypes.
“Lordseeker” wardrobe set for player characters.
Design Notes: I was inspired by Dune, as well as classic adventure anime designs for this wardrobe set. This set help expand the scope of the world through visual storytelling.
This visual target image was created in collaboration with the Battle Barge art team. I helped established the poses and composition, as well as adding atmosphere and painting in the look for the shader. This image was instrumental for defining the look of final game.
The other images in the gallery showcase the progress from the in game shot to compositional sketches.
This visual target image was created in collaboration with the Battle Barge art team. I helped established the poses and composition, as well as adding atmosphere and painting in the look for the shader. This image was instrumental for defining the look of final game.
The other images in the gallery showcase the progress from the in game shot to compositional sketches.
Early key art for inspiration and visualization of the tone of the final look of the game. This image was created in collaboration with concept artist Garrett Post and our Art Director David Ryan Paul.
Design notes: We created many compositional sketches to create an intense, energy filled illustration, the final look was a combination of both Garrett Post and myself. I handled the characters while Garrett handled the background elements.
Storyboards and key art roughs for establishing story beats as well as tone and “vibe”. These were done quickly to establish many aspects of the world design for presentations and to help the team visualize the scope of the game.
The Cultists are an enemy faction that use dark and corrupted magic to gain power by way of metamorphosis. They steal the souls of innocent people to create their minions and fill our their ranks.
Design notes: Using insect forms to visually show the “hive mind” aspect of this faction. I also juxtaposed beautiful, regal forms with grotesque worm and grub like shapes. The idea of the masks was to show that the top level cultists want to create less individualization as their minions lose their souls for the “greater good”.
Final design with variants for the “Vilefly” flying monster that used an existing enemy animation rig.
Multitudes of sketches for new alien races for player characters. I used this opportunity to exploring everything from lizard men, robots, space elves and devils, to dwarf like earth beings.
Design notes: These were done in the spirit of “bluesky” sketching with no constraints, pure character design just to see what the team responded to.
The “Sectoids” were an alien race of bug people I explored as a playable hero-race. The NPC character Brommit is from this race, that was very appealing to the team.
Design notes: It was a fun challenge to make this alien race appealing, despite their insect body forms. Finding the right balance between humanoid and insect was key.
“Norlings” were another proposed alien player race. Much like dwarves from a traditional fantasy world, the Norlings were stocky, hart bitten travelers that has strong family ties and were master storytellers.
Design notes: I tried many different design forms on their stocky short bodies. Fuzzy and mammalian, spiky and reptile like, even a plant-like hybrid look were explored in these sketches.
“Snapdragon” familiar for the player characters. The pets were ethereal familiars that grant their partner magical abilities. This particular design ended up being a bit to detailed for the eventual art style.
The motion concept is to illustrate how the pet might cast it’s abilities in relation to the player.
“Foxbright” familiar for the player characters. The pets were ethereal familiars that grant their partner magical abilities. The detail level for this design is pared down and simplified with very little interior details and a stronger silhouette.
“Bitemaw” familiar for the player characters. The pets were ethereal familiars that grant their partner magical abilities.
Design notes: This “scarier” design was to show the range of the pets, from cute like the “Foxbright” to this more dangerous, squid-like creature.
Early pet exploration roughs. The pets were ethereal familiars that grant their partner magical abilities. These concepts show the large range of pets we could design, from cute, weird, and creepy.
Design notes: Some designs were something as simple as “dragons”, other were inspired by real animals. I tried to add a cartoony sci-fi twist to the designs so they fit into our world design.
Art style exploration for “loot drops” for the game. Loot was an important aspect to the gameplay loop, so we decided the art for the loot should be fun and interesting to look at. Following the Dark Souls model, we intended for the loot to have interesting world building descriptions.
The sketches at the end of the gallery were done to explore a tactile piece of tech the player would interact with for upgrades and skill trees.
Some of the first sketches I did for the project, mostly to just try some different art styles and to explore the over the top design sense we liked from retro anime and comics.
A variation of the top image ended up being the basis for our first player character model, with a design pass done by our art director.
Environmental concepts and brainstorming.
1. Ambient natural creatures for the desert biome.
2. Tusktown dwelling, the town was carved out of an ancient tusk of a felled creature.
3-8. Ancient ruins brainstorming thumbnails.
9. Simplified rock forms for assisting the environment art team.
Quick, rough brainstorming sketches for the evil Harvesters medical facility. The images at the end of the gallery were done over the concepts of Garrett Post, to explore variations of Harvesters levels.
Design Notes: The intent was to combine an oppressive factory setting with a creepy hospital to visually explain how the Harvesters use biological parts of their enemies to create their cyborg army.
Motion concepts and key-pose sketches to assist the animation team with getting the right sense of energy and flair for the animation style. I created many of these style of sketches to help the team visualize their animations.
Reality storms were an in-world idea for how the planet remakes itself, since our levels were procedurally generated. I visualized the storms as orbs of vibrating energy that violently move across the landscape, reshaping it in strange and random ways.
Vorb!
Our version of a “loot goblin”. The Vorb would haphazardly run around the level enticing players to chase it, it could turn into it’s fully spherical form and bounce around cliffs and other dangerous areas. If killed it explodes leaving unique and rare loot.
