Prototype

2006-2008  At Radical Entertainment I art directed the game Prototype from a small interior room demo to a large playable NYC open world game slice. It defined the core look and feel of the game we were making. It took nearly a year to make then went through multiple green light approval stages including a large focus test process. This game demo was very well received and earned us final project approval and the go ahead for full production with a big next-gen budget.



I worked with the project team and multiple internal support groups of Radical's in-sourcing business model. My contributions included defining art direction and art style from concepts to in game assets, creating styleguides, constant sourcing and hiring the needed full time and contract artists, mitigating and solving team issues, establishing goals, elevating art quality, etc. as well as specifying, prioritizing and requesting technology we needed to build in the new engine to achieve the art direction.

I created the 67 page high level art direction document and other art style guides for Prototype as well as a 40 page photography book. My photography book defined specific elements of the look and feel of the NYC we wanted to portray in our game including specific looks in: lighting, texturing, district motifs, architecture, styles and set locations. I hiked and cabbed through NYC all day every day for a solid week and found inspiration from all over the lower west side of Battery Park to Times Square, Soho, Chelsea, Hell's Kitchen, Madison Square, Central Park, Harlem and most areas in between.

 

During my time on Prototype I proposed and created a photo studio for the entire company with funding from multiple project teams. I incorporated my methods of character design, practical art, lighting and photography to develop a large studio character reference library and brought higher quality authentic style texturing to the studio. This process, style and reference source was used on three game projects while I was at Radical.

Prototype had many challenging problems of all types, more so than other game projects I've worked on, but it's also one of the projects I learned a lot on and grew as an art director.