Savage

Heavy Gear 3 / 1999

This was Savage’s first project after being “spun-off” from Activision. It was an exciting opportunity to build on the success of Heavy Gear 2 and a coinciding children’s TV show based on the series. We started with a very small team of 6 to handle environments, characters, and animation. Some new visual advances were specular maps to add shine/material variation, multiple texture terrain painting and emissive alpha.  We were able to expand the universe by introducing a new class of “Gear” called the Paladin. His  design was inspired by a medieval suit of armor and was backed by the new “Bishop” Reich. Many of our features were ahead of their time, such as the Gear Pilot being able to get out of his Gear and fight on foot, while the Gear protected him – this is a major element of “TitanFall” being released March 2014. I was both Art Director and Concept Designer on this title and got to explore many cool environments, creatures, vehicles and weapons. Unfortunately, Activision couldn’t decide what kind of game they wanted to make (single player or massive multiplayer) and cancelled the title.

◦      Responsible for:  Art Direction, large team management, pushing the Tech Art department for cutting edge shaders and tools, lighting and skydome illustration, and interfacing with the marketing department.
◦      Proprietary 3D Engine (pc)

Jurassic Park 3 / 2001

Movie based games are rarely easy and Jurassic Park 3 was no different. It was the first project that used Savage’s game engine Fang, so the engine and game were being developed concurrently. As the Art Director, I oversaw both my internal team of 8 artist and the work of an external art team. During production I had to move forward without design direction from the JP3 movie…a moving target. I took the industrial design sensibility from the first two movies and spring-boarded from there. The game itself was similar to Tomb Raider – 3rd person view, running thru jungles, caves and industrial buildings. I designed many scenarios that would be fun to run, climb and jump around in, while progressing the player through the storyline. Many of the challenges were moving from outdoor to indoor spaces and keeping lighting and level loading consistent and smooth. I had a lot of creative freedom designing cool spaces, but ultimately chasing the movie’s storyline/environments and the clients always changing design direction, the project was cancelled after 1 year.

◦      Responsible for:  Art Direction, environment pre-vis, all prop, building and vehicle design, level layout design, both exterior/interior modeling and texturing, lighting, and skydome illustration.
◦      Fang Proprietary 3D Engine(xbox, ps2)

007 : NightFire / 2002

Savage was contracted to do 2 driving levels for EA Vancouver’s Bond game: one a snowmobile escape and the other a ride in Bond’s Aston Martin Vanquish through a town in the Swiss Alps. I led a team of 6 environment artists to build modular set of pieces to construct/assemble the levels 3DSMax. Vertex lighting was done inside 3DSMax and then duplicated inside the Eagle Engine. I worked closely with EA Vancouver’s designers to create the level layout and managed expectations to their producers. I designed the range of areas/elements (terrain, building architecture, vehicles and props) you encountered throughout both levels and was responsible for overall lighting. The sketches represent a handful of locations during the Swiss Alps level.

◦      Responsible for:  Art Direction, level layout design, lighting, skydome illustration, majority of asset design and vehicle design.
◦      EA Eagle Engine (xbox, ps2, pc)