X-Men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged Edition Concept Art Part 2

Somehow this slipped by me and I never put up more art from 2009's Wolverine movie game.  This stuff is from the jungle flashback.  If I recall correctly we were looking to have it somewhere in southeast Asia but then the movie changed it to Africa to have them look for Vibramium or something like that.  There's tons more so I'll sort through it and put some more pages together.  Hopefully it won't be a year or two between that.

Some early grayscale paintings and drawings.  More of a Asian feel than African.

Here's a discarded boss battle idea.  We would've had a mutant able to manipulate the big temple.

Working with a designer on a puzzle idea on how to get across a gorge.

Concepts for assets that made it into the game.

Proposing ideas on how we can inflict damage on our hero.

Random assets and area concepts.

Kotaku Gallery Article/ Star Trek meets Legion of Superheroes: the comic!

Figure I'd answer the call for submissions from the writer Luke Plunkett and it turns out he really enjoyed the Star Wars: Jedi Outcast game, so he was kind enough to post a gallery on Kotaku: a site for gaming and otaku news.

What wasn't mentioned and I can't believe I didn't mention it here already is that I am penciling the new Legion of Superheroes/ Star Trek crossover for IDW Publishing.  It will be a six issue series starting in October and is in the spotlight for Diamond Previews.  I'm halfway done with the third issue so far and if I get permission, I might post some little preview pics here.  If not, I'll post some stuff after the issue is out.

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE Game Concept Art Part 1: Characters and Alkali Lake

Traveling back in time now and looking at the X-Men Origins: Wolverine Uncaged Edition.  It's a game where, despite being a movie adaptation, is the closest to the look and feel of being Wolverine.  Seriously, the guy has an indestructible skeleton and claws that can slice through anything.  So imagine what that would do to a human body and, oh yeah, we went there.  So rent, buy a copy, used or new, it doesn't matter to me anymore more, but check it out.  Oh, you can watch him heal damage from skeleton, to muscle, to skin as well.

I was on this game for the duration of production.  There were the earliest concepting stages where you were allowed to just be creative with almost no restrictions.  We explored what we could do with the character and places he would go.  What would make cool environments to fight in? What kind of baddies could possibly stand a chance against an enemy you can't possibly kill, etc...

In part one of this post, I have some character and Alkali Lake environment drawings.  This is where the Weapon X Project was located in the movies.  You guys know me, I'm more of an environment guy, not so much character for games, but it was nice to stretch my style a little bit here and get it to be a little more realistic compared to my comic book approach to things.  The environment drawings posted here are just a small amount against the hundreds that were created by me and other concept artists.  Especially Alkali Lake.  This went through several changes in the game design and many ideas were just not used, due to time, or complication, but they would've been epic to see in the game.

This is the game where I actually began to change to working totally digitally on the Cintiq.  I just couldn't draw on the Wacom tablet since there was the disconnect with my hand on the tablet and the cursor on the screen.  The Cintiq removed that disconnect and so I was able to create a bit faster and clearer by dropping tones in under the drawing.  Looking back on some of these, I could've probably been a little cleaner...

Enjoy!

Flamethrower dude to burn the skin off of Wolvie.

Might have gotten a little Halo-y on these.

Energy gauntlets to pack a punch.

Roughs and my final submission for the Cloaking soldier.

Trying some color variations.

Some of my roughs for the Grappler in the Jungle.

Action and vista concept for Alkali Lake

Vista and layout concept looking down on a base.  Some architectural concepts.

Architectural details for windows and columns

Yeah! Crates and ho hum objects, but someone's gotta do it and I'm all to happy to do it.  Is that wrong?

SINGULARITY CONCEPT ART

Here's a huge art dump for Raven Software's Singularity. I came onto the project for the last year and a half of it's production, so the look and feel was pretty well established, but still allowed for creative freedom in terms of layout, architectural details, and some props.

This is a small sample of the amount of work I've done on the project, but illustrates many things concept artists should be thinking about when working on a game.

The Village








Barisov's Tower


Start Station (abandoned concept)

This was a bit of a bummer for me when the idea to start you out in something like an abandoned LOST Dharma station, and while exploring you come across a control center that has a recording dedicating the station and you would realize you're in an alternate world. The world is over thrown by the USSR and science has taken a great leap based upon research of E-99.





Research Labs


Props and Graphics








Storyboarding: I provided storyboards for many of the projects I worked on. Coming from comics, it seemed like a natural fit and I really enjoyed telling the story of our games and helping breath life into the characters.

Ending

Storyboarding: Katya Ending


Storyboarding: Alternate EndingStoryboarding: The following scenes were originally planned to be third person shots and include many sequences that were cut due to time and streamlining of the story.

Uber-TMD the Dam
Talk with Barisov
Feeder Boss Base Entry: This sequence was drawn much tighter to provide an example on how clear we can make these boards. The boards took much longer to draw and the monster was drawn by Vinod Rams.