TS Project

2008. After wrapping up my work on Prototype I moved onto a new project helping to build a new team and new game. We went on to create an action adventure playable game demo in the spy genre. In less than a year while developing a new engine and building a new team we delivered an "open neighborhood" playable demo with solid looking cover based gunplay, vehicles and parkour style locomotion. Below are a few early work in progress screenshots of art I was leading and developing with the team.

In 2008 Activision and Vivendi merged. The above mentioned project was cancelled for several reasons. They said the game looked great but needed to turn into somethign else. They expressed their decision with the fact they already had the James Bond Franchise and stated several other decision points based around the IP and the games potential returns. 

As Radical restructured we helped with the Scarface2 project for several weeks before that project was also cancelled. Here are a few wip art assets I made for Scarface2.

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.

Vancouver BC

I spent two years in Vancouver BC, working at Radical Entertainment and living on the North Shore.

Most of my time outside of work was spent riding "The Shore". We lived at the base of Mt. Fromme, I rode it and Mt. Seymour often. I felt like I belonged in those woods, a perfect habitat for me. I miss those trails.

Here's a video my buddy Andrew shot of one of our favorite trails, Boogieman:

http://vimeo.com/1728257

TaskForce3D

In 2006 I went back to contracting while keeping an eye open for specific job opportunities. My long term focus was on being creative, developing "new IP", not just doing artwork but I knew the need for quality art outsourcing was on the rise so I formed TaskForce3D. I set it up and marketed it as an experienced next-gen art outsourcing shop, where I could bring in other artists to take on larger amounts of contract work as a team. I completed contract artwork for several production companies in US and UK doing next gen-art, xbox live arcade art to expo booth design concepts. I brought in other artists from time to time to help out, usually because the timelines were very compressed. Most of the time it was just me working 24/7 finding work then doing it. I had a business office inside and converted the garage into a 3 station art studio with no phones and no internet. When I was in the office I was doing email, phone calls, bidding and finding work. When I was out in the studio I was focused on art only; no email, no web, no phones, no distractions.

My favorite project that summer was with EA on Medal of Honor Airbourne. I worked with my friend Justin who was an art director there. He directed me on five rendered images they wanted for marketing and promotional materials. This image was one printed on two page full bleed spreads in magazines (The color and levels are a bit off in this version of the image though).

At the time I was meeting with multiple companies, working all the time and seeing my family go off to movies and the park on the weekends without me. I didn't like that part too much. I realized I was often pretty much a slave to last minute rushed projects and that China was going to be hard to compete with, price wise not quality wise, because their per man day price point was so low. My prediction became: building an art outsourcing company is probably not the best avenue for me to be pursuing right now. Around this time I received an email and or phone call from Radical Entertainment in Vancouver BC, Canada. They were interested in talking to me about joining their team for a "brand new IP project"...

LFP

In 2005 LFP lost two of its founding members, one of them the art director. LFP had offered me a job in 2003, after they saw my work on the Travis Pastrana Pro-MX project. LFP would go on to eventually take over that project and ship it as MTX Mototrax. They made me their first offer around the same time Infinity Ward did but I choose IW for multiple reasons. Now, several years later, LFP was going through a number of changes and needed an art director to "help create new game IPs, rebuild their art team and help them successfully make the transition into next-gen game development".  I was offered this AD job and after much deliberation I accepted. It was difficult to leave IW because I loved the games we made, I respected the company and culture and have friends there. The LFP opportunity to create and direct new IP and the challenge to succeed seemed too fun and potentially rewarding to pass up. It offered me an opportunity to prove I could successfully lead and art direct a professional dev team. It was my chance so I jumped on it.

They hired me as "art manager" until I delivered results and earned the art director title. My primary objectives were to conceptualize and create new project IPs, put together presentations, pitch to publishers and build a next gen capible art team. My secondary objective was to oversee the final weeks of art completion on the first nearly completed world series of poker project and ensure five sku's shipped on time. I had zero involvement or responsibility in the art style or the lack of quality of artwork on the first title. It was mostly done before I arrived. World series of Poker shipped all five sku's and we went onto rebuilding LFP. Unfortunately several artists did not make the cut and we had to let them go. The art team that remained after the cut was Axel Ortiz, Joanne Lee, Matt Silverstein, Allan Hayburn, Tracy Iwata and Milton Mariscal. I then went on a wide search for appropriate top talent. Over a period of a couple months I tested and hired five awesome artists and animators: David Donze, Adam Lawthers, Matt Genovese, Damien Brown and Rob Blanchard.

I went on to create multiple pitch presentations with the new high potential art team. We also made art demos/videos for five game concepts that we quickly created and shopped to publishers: a Snowboarding/snowskating game, an Off Road racing game (dirt and watercraft), a toon style Cops and Robbers game, a FPS game and a Bike racing game. Publishers liked the snowboarding concept but no publisher wanted to compete with SSX3 at the time.

Crave was interested in the Bike racing game. After they were rejected project approval by SONY "PEG" (product evaluation group) they flew me up north to SONY San Mateo to pitch the game. I received SONY's project approval on the spot after my presentation. SONY was excited about the project concept and gave us the green light. On the drive back to the airport, Mark Burke, one of the owners of Crave told me, "I'm excited about this game, you did a great job today. I think this is going to be our first fully priced game". (Crave usually markets lower budgeted, lower priced titles). I went back to the office and got busy with our concept artist, Axel, on further directing and defining the vision of the games levels and environments.  The unique racing concept, the trick system, animation style and main gameplay hooks were already well defined in my presentation. Below are a few pieces used to convey ideas along the way while developing the game concept.

  

Meanwhile Activision had not been happy with the art quality in the first WSOP (as I would have guessed). They were not going to renew a contract for a new next-gen 360 Poker game until the studio could show that it could produce good next gen level art. Well, I already had that under control. We had all been working to get the newly formed team up to speed to show what we could do. We presented Activision with an example set of next-gen art; mainly a Max Pescatori character fully animated with facial animation and a bit of environment art. It was the first batch of next-gen game art ever completed by most of the team members. The five artists I hired were all first time game developers and were real good at the work they did. Activision was pleased and gave LFP a contract for WSOP, Tournament of Champions for the new XBox 360. Around this time I earned the art director title.

Here are some early wip's we created while the team was working on first assets to get project approval:

See what IGN reviewers had to say about the shipped game here:

WSOP 360 IGN Review  

"...With its second release, World Series of Poker: Tournament of Champions, the company has completely reversed its standing from last time around and has released what may very well be the best poker game on the market".

Due to a specific uncontrollable circumstance, I decided to part ways with LFP a little over a year after I'd helped the studio rebuild and secure two projects. It's too bad because I really enjoyed working with my art team and the programming team there. I think we, the art team did great work together. As a director I really enjoyed seeing the work the team was developing, especially from Axel, David, Adam, Joanne, Matt and Rob because they were realizing my vision and direction with fine precision, yet still including their own style in their work which is very rewarding. I won't post any dirt here but If you want to know why, what or who the problem was causing me to leave, ask any of the art team members or a number of the programming team members, or maybe we can talk in person one day. But it doesn't really matter now. In all honesty I had hoped working there would be a long term deal but pretty early on, because the way the studio was "managed", I felt in my gut that it was probably a stepping stone along an unknown path.

SoCal

...

couple sketches

Nov. 2003: Paul Messerly, one of the animators at IW always had a pen and pad close by and did some outstanding sketches at work. In 03 I hadn't spent any time at all drawing because I made the move to Cali and was working on COD. In my spare time I was always writing music, jamming and looking for a band in LA. Paul inspired me to do some drawing. So I remember breaking out the old pens and markers and making a conscious effort to get back into drawing. I did these two sketches over Thanksgiving break in Calabasis.