Everquest Dungeons: Nagafen Character Design

March 30, 2019

The most iconic character designed for EQD is certainly Nagafen the dragon. Tackling this character was exciting and challenging.

This high resolution character model of Nagafen shows the final re-imagined design in the stylized realistic art style of EQD.

Billy King had a great idea to accentuate his fire breathing action as a gameplay tell by expanding his chin, fanning out his throat scales, and fire coursing through the space between the scales as illustrated in the construction drawing below.

The scale of Nagafen is much larger than previous versions. This is some of the artistic freedom we had in the visual development of this game. Classic elements such as the shape of the horns and center head fin were retained with modern touches applied to scale pattern and overall body proportions.

Everquest Dungeons: Ice Giant Character Designs

March 29, 2019

The Ice Giant was the second giant character design challenge taken after the Hill Giant. The challenge was to show scale using snow and ice elements. Because of the very nature of these elements, snow and ice is harder to show large scale compared to forest elements. The result and solution seen below by the high resolution model built by Maria Panafilova shows the use of rocks embedded in the snow packs and a range of icicle scales to show the large size of the giant.

Concept artist Norris Lin explored a range of great ideas on ice armor and weapons, and using icicle spikes to give him a menacing stance and appearance.

I also had him explore how mounds of snow grouping and ice show contrast and natural delineation of armor and skin.

Ideas C1, C2, and C3 toyed with the idea of having an ice fortress on his back like the Hill Giant’s back forest.

I wanted to be on point with the color choices for the Ice Giant and went with cool blues and experimented with saturating the blues on the armor to be warmer and provide contrast with the cool ice skin.

The helmet and beard design gave the Ice Giant some intelligence and a viking-like design.

I really liked an earlier design that showed a weapon embedded on his back that he can unsheathe. I thought he could just pull a large icicle from his back and use as a weapon instead of an ice axe which felt unnatural and out of place. The size of the feet were important to making the Ice Giant believably fit in a snowy environment. The bigger the feet the better it can traverse through the snow much like the idea of snow shoes expanding the footprint and proving a large surface area.

Everquest Dungeons: Lavastorm Level

March 29, 2019

The first level and environment work I art directed was the unforgiving region of Lavastorm. I really wanted to create a bold, fantasy world environment that was different and a volcano ravaged land that wasn’t your typical lava rock environment. I looked to these artists: Genndy Tartakovsky, Roger Dean, and Eyvind Earle for some inspiration. The designs of their worlds were made of geometric shapes, a minimalist feel, and immense scale in land masses and forms.

Lavastorm was ravaged by a meteor strike. I envisioned a land that was scarred by the impact causing whole mountains and rock formations to radiate out from the center of the meteor’s impact crater for a dramatic sprawl of massive destruction.

I settled on the shape of rock formations that were sharp and angular and focused on a single image of a vista.

Color studies of Lavastorm was focused on a complimentary color scheme of orange and blue. The blue was designated for the rocky formations and lava rock, and the orange for the lava and fiery sky.

Construction drawings of some of the rock formations in the Lavastorm vista.

Work in progress of the Lavastorm vista in Unreal Engine 4.

The center piece of the Lavastorm level is Mount Sol, the liar of Lord Nagafen the dragon. The following concepts reflect the geometric influence of the rest of the environment. Instead of the typical volcano shape and design I directed concept artist, Mongsub Song to give Mount Sol large, planar sides giving it a more menacing, monolithic look.

Everquest Dungeons: Teir'Dal Character Designs

March 28, 2019

The Teir’Dal are the Everquest dark elves. The character designs needed to reflect personality, culture, and environmental influences unique to this race. They needed to be pale skinned, attractive but edgy, nimble looking with a strong and heavily muscular lower body, and dressed with carapace armor from arachnids of their region.

Tonally the Teir’Dal had a naturally evil look. The overall shape and silhouette of the character is a triangle with the base being wide with strong legs and a slender, elongated neck and head at the top. The designs had to be sharp and pointy and look dangerous to touch.

These female designs explored the use of spider silks for clothing and web shapes for accents and texture.

The following designs emphasize a more sensual look while maintaining the design goals of the race.

This was a finalist for the male wizard Teir’Dal character design. It embodied the triangle silhouette, an angular carapace armor set, webbing accents, and pointy bits that make the Teir’Dal deadly to engage in combat.

This finalist for the female tank design is lighter in armor to give her more agility that is fashionable yet deadly.

Everquest Dungeons: Dwarf Character Designs

March 27, 2019

The Dwarves of Everquest Dungeons were going to be a version of their earliest evolutionary state. Their creator, the God of Underfoot, Brell Sirilis, fashioned a Dwarf from clay. I thought it would be interesting to give the designs a look as if they were molded and modeled from clay complete with finger marks and depressions as well as etching from clay tools.

Meanwhile, I had another concept artist do a take on a more rocky, stone look with faceted designs and tile work reminiscent of Mayan tile art. The creative director also had an idea to embed and adorn their bodies with gems since they were abundant in their environment.

Another take was to have this concept artist explore a more expected and on point approach The gems were embedded in their armor for these designs.

These silhouette studies focused the overall silhouette around a square shape.

This is an example of my art direction notes grouped into areas of focus for the concept artist’s next iteration of visual development work. The direction narrowed the ideas that would make the Dwarf race distinctive in look from the other races and accentuate their unique qualities.

The final design of the Dwarf is the more expected, stubby silhouette shape but with some unique design ideas such as a rock-like faceted armor design, embedded gems, squared off and faceted body parts, decorated with linear patterned curls.

Everquest Dungeons: Ogre Character Design

March 26, 2019

The most drastic character design task for Everquest Dungeons was the Ogres. The time period of the game is set many years in the past before all the events fans of the Everquest franchise understand and remember. In EQD, Ogres are smart (before the gods cursed them to lose their intelligence) , have hair, and are war generals. The one element carried over is their blood rage represented as the red colored masks and helmets in the following designs. Another prominent design element is their scar tattoos.

The goal of female Ogre designs was to make them powerful but still feminine. In addition to making them war generals, the armor were designed to look as if they were constructed from the reptilian shells and skin taken from their surrounding habitat.

Color studies explored armor and skin color that will make the red masks and helmets a striking contrast to the overall character design.

Final female Ogre warrior design.

Final male Ogre warrior design.

Everquest Dungeons: Kerra Character Designs

March 25, 2019

The noble cat people from Kerra Isle called the Kerra was an opportunity to design a race of anthropomorphic creatures. The goal was to make them look athletic and agile and adorn them in moon worshiping jewelry, shell armor fashioned from the surrounding waters, and nautically inspired knot and rope gear. The trick was to balance the amount of cat and human body features in their designs.

These designs explored potential color direction, fur patterns, and shell fashion.

Lead concept artist, Billy King, take on the Kerra focused on a leaner look, creating a more streamline shape akin to sea otters as a nautical animal influence.

The following silhouette studies were created by an outsourcing company in Taiwan called On Point Creative. I specifically was interested in partnering with them in the character designs of this race since cats are culturally popular in Asia. The result was much different than the Western freelance artist's work.

The following design was a visualization of the Kerra as a race that featured cat legs and a human upper torso. This design also heavily used shells and nautical hair and tail adornments.

Finalist of a male Kerra character design.

Finalist of a female Kerra character design.

Marvel Team-Up: Mid-Century Modern New York Times Square Pre-visualization

March 22, 2019

One of the main goals that I was tasked with as the art director of Marvel Team-Up was to create a distinct art style and look that is unique to other Marvel games, past and present. After several proposals, we mutually agreed on an intriguing art style: Early 60’s Mid-Century Modern in 2018. The idea is that the design aesthetics of the 60’s never fully went away and remain in this alternate world. Technology of today is still present such as mobile phones and electric cars. One of the major reasons for this particular look and style is it fits with the history of Marvel which was founded in the early 60’s and most of the iconic Marvel superheroes were created around this time.

I wanted to pre-visualize how this art style would look like so I took an old photo of Times Square…

I photobashed in signage in the Mid-Century Modern style and modern elements of technology such as electronic billboards and modern product placement advertisement.

The final painting of Mid-Century Modern New York Times Square illustrate the promise of what the world of Marvel Team-Up would have looked like in this art style. The pedestrians and vehicles enhance the art style with similar a design treatment (see posts on Pedestrians and Vehicle designs in Mid-Century Modern for the game). Contemporary elements include the street lights, monorail, and holographic signages. I affectionally called the piece “Blade Runner 1960”.

Marvel Team-Up: Mid-Century Modern New York Streets

March 21, 2019

The following concept art was further exploration of transforming the streets of NYC into this alternate early 60’s art look that never seem to have left (See the earlier post of Times Square Mid-Century Modern Pre-visualization for more details on the art direction).

Pinterest board of Mid-Century Modern urban architecture

Google Street View images were sent to an outsourcing company along with an art direction packet detailing how to transform the modern streets to an alternate 1960’s reality mixing the signage, vehicles, architecture, and pedestrian aesthetics.

We selected these two to finalize along with an earlier thumbnail. The first piece showed a more aspirational tone. The second explored a more foreboding tone.

In addition to all the elements that make this art style distinctive, the color palette and graphic design shapes in this final painting really solidified the art direction.

Marvel Team-Up Visual Development: Vehicle Design

March 20, 2019

One of the most significant elements that will support the early 60’s, Mid-Century Modern art style of this world are the vehicle designs. The first step was to research the cars and vehicles of the era. I looked for cars from the late 50’s to mid-60’s range of designs. Below is a collection that was the basis of vehicle designs I wanted the concept artists to use to design the cars and other vehicles such as buses, delivery trucks, and police cars.

Pinterest board of early 60’s vehicle designs

Concept artist, Farzad Varahramyan delivered some wonderful designs early in the process. Below is collection of some of my favorites. Some of the early art direction focused on ensuring 60’s vehicle design elements were prominently displayed in the designs which included having chrome trims around the windows and headlights, chrome bumpers and mirrors, and circular headlights. LED headlights, electric ports, and modern paint jobs combined with the 60’s aesthetics completed the unique look.

The following vehicle designs resonated the most with me and represent a type of vehicle or model the will populate the world of the game and really sell the Mid-Century Modern aesthetic. This design was for a common, compact sedan based on a Russian car called the Lada. The boxy chassis and the large round headlights on a large front grille makes it a distinctively utilitarian and practical design.

This car is an example of mashing a modern car design with retro tail wings.

This vehicle is a minivan in the alternative Mid-Century Modern style.

This bus design takes the classic bus design of the time period with a sleek profile, large electric intake on the side, quad stacked round headlights, and a two tone paint job.

A Sport Utility Vehicle design.

Marvel Team-Up: Iconic Marvel Character Designs

March 19, 2019

Iconic Marvel character design is one of the most exciting yet daunting art direction challenges I ever faced in my entire career. We started to take on this challenge after we established the alternate early 60’s Mid-Century Modern art style for the world of the game. That provided the basis for the initial approach which was taking the early 60’s design of a Marvel character (or earliest version if they weren’t created in the 60’s) and add some elements of modern design. We agreed on the 80% 20% rule: 80% of the character design was based on the iconic character design and 20% would be a mix of Mid-Century Modern and contemporary tech or aesthetics. The first character we chose to work on was Captain Marvel. Not only is he the most iconic of the 60’s Marvel heroes but the most difficult to design.

The early designs were interesting but Marvel thought these were too off brand. At least we established our boundaries. It’s alway good to push but always listen to the client and in this case treat the IP with care and respect as if they were your creations.

These are samples from the second pass of character design work. These were successful and were met with acceptance and enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, our internal Lead concept artist, Billy King, took over and honed in on a more refined look.

Design #14 was the finalist and this character sheet breaks down the 80% 20% rule we set for the character designs.

Following Captain America we began exploration on other iconic Marvel characters that were going to be in the game.

Jerad Marantz understood best how to work with Marvel and design the iconic characters. He has worked on many of the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and knew the boundaries to best work within and create approved designs.

Marvel Team-Up: Hydra Soldier Units

March 18, 2019

The look of Hydra soldiers are usually associated with garish green and yellow color schemes, baggy uniforms, and red goggles. The Marvel Cinematic Universe introduced the world to a more militarized inspired aesthetic. The art direction approach was to make a through line, connected look for the different Hydra soldier units much like the stormtrooper variations in the Star Wars series.

Helmet design would describe the soldiers role and functionality of their class.

A skull-like appearance in the helmet designs are an homage to their leader, Red Skull.

Final design for the Melee class Hydra soldier.

Final design for the Marine/ Ranged class Hydra soldier.

Work in progress model by Donald Anderson

Final design for the Communication class Hydra soldier.

Work in progress model by Marcellus Barnes

Final design for the Stalwart class Hydra soldier.

Early design exploration for a drone Hydra soldier.

Early designs for a Hive trooper. Taken from the comic books, this character was a Hydra soldier infected by an alien parasite that would take control of the host.

Marvel Team-Up: Mid-Century Modern Pedestrian Character Designs

March 17, 2019

An important component to achieving the Mid-Century Modern art direction for the game, the people on the streets of New York City needed to be designed. As mentioned in the Times Square post, the designs of the early 60’s needed to be identified in the supporting elements and in this case the pedestrians. I broke down the parts of the pedestrians into these categories of design focus: Hairstyles and Fashion.

I narrowed the fashion direction to the clean and simple styles as seen below.

I narrowed the female hairstyles to the selections below. They worked best with the simple and clean fashion designs.

Art direction 60’s female hairstyle slide

Female business women fashion and hairstyles with accessories have the clean and simple look.

Art direction 60’s men’s hairstyles slide

Designs for business men fashion complete with hats and briefcase accessories.

Several casual men’s fashion designs.

The police fashion is really retro and combines 50’s and 60’s uniform designs.

Concepts for firemen and firewomen uniform and equipment designs.

Color studies of policemen and policewomen designs.

Several old women fashion, hairstyles, and color studies.

An example of one of the old woman designs.

Marvel Team-Up: Hydra Mech Units

March 16, 2019

The second tier of Hydra units designed were the Hydra Mechs. They were autonomous soldiers and needed to be one level above a soldier but not as advanced as a higher tiered Mech that was to be determined in the future. They needed to be bulky and less refined.

The Riot Sleeper had giant fists and hydraulic pistons to smash their enemies with extreme force.

The Ranged Sleepers had shoulder mounted rocket launchers and a canon arm.

Construction drawing and final design of Riot Sleeper.

Construction drawing and final design of Ranged Sleeper.

Marvel Team-Up: Hydra Helicarrier

March 15, 2019

These Hydra Helicarrier designs were a modernization of the ones found in the Secret Empire comic series. They were a combination of military technology and supernatural designs. Concept artist, Fazard Varahramyan is a legend in the videogame industry especially when comes to the visual development of sci-fi themes and military vehicles. I pretty much gave him independent freedom to develop some initial ideas. I then worked closely with Marvel to craft designs that fit in the overall universe were we building to establish art direction for the game.

Marvel Team-Up: Hydra Artillery

March 14, 2019

There were two ideas that the Hydra artillery designs needed to project: obvious military functionality and an obvious power source powering the unit. There were three artillery units: a mobile turret, a mobile mortar launcher, and a mobile super cannon/ howitzer. In the story of the game, Hydra has acquired a mystic energy source that generates massively destructive powers used to terrorize New York City.

Thumbnail sketches of the mobile turrets.