Monster Kingdom 2 Character Design
Monster Kingdom 2 characters were designed with a specific set of requirements in mind: They should be colorful and whimsical enough to engage a casual player, while still being detailed and thematically mature enough to engage mid-core player. The designs are optimized for our pipeline, which features a 2D skeletal animation engine running at 60fps. This means characters should be constructed in a way that makes them easy to break apart and rig, and that their designs should take advantage of opportunities for dramatic silhouette breaks and trailing animation. The aesthetic here allowed me to be as off-the-wall with the characters as I wanted, and I loved every single one of them.
Heroes & Armies Character Design
Heroes & Armies characters were designed for maximum visual impact from a 3:2 isometric perspective. This meant lots of big, interesting details in the head and shoulders area, and allowed us to realize some time + texture savings by making parts like legs and feet simple and interchangeable between characters. Each character design includes a 3-tiered visual progression - we relied on things like material + silhouette changes to the helmets and weapons to make that distinction, while leaving the central mass of the characters largely unchanged to save texture space. The quasi-medieval fantasy genre has been pretty well explored by now, so it was fun to offer up some stylized personal takes on standard tropes like Orcs and Elves.
Hard Surface Design
I find that incorporating 3D modeling into my concept work really helps me to get the results I want in the time frame I need. By putting together hard-surfaced concepts like buildings or items in a 3D package, I can make sure that the perspective is believable and correct, and that the silhouette looks exactly the way I want it to from our game 'camera'. It also allows me to forecast potential problems or bottlenecks our 3D artists might run into while they're executing the production art, and either mitigate or avoid them entirely.