A couple years ago I worked on this cool little adventure game/technology demonstrator called Titan. I was mainly doing character design work and I only worked on it part time, as I was also working full time at NLG/Nintendo. It was a fun little project…and the design freedom was a great balance to the more rigid confines of the Nintendo work. Unfortunately after several months the cheques stopped coming in and emails went unanswered…….and I was done. From what I heard the whole project collapsed several months later. It was a shame……I would have loved to have designed more of those robots! Anyways, here are a few pieces, and a larger selection of the work can be seen here.
FURIOUS....no not really...
Over the past couple years I've helped out on Anki Overdrive with character design and illustration. Earlier this year I was asked to work on their Fast & Furious cross over...again with character design and illustration. Working on film related projects can be bit tricky...as you have to jump through many levels of approval: internal developer approval, production studio approval, the I.P. holder approval and then the actors themselves. But I've worked on other film related projects in the past, so I know the drill. Things went fairly smoothly, but there were a few hick ups along the way, with the scope of the work being cut back, the Anki art director being replaced half way through the project and a few scheduling issues. But in the end, the work was finished and was given over to Anki. Fast forward a few months to release and I see that the characters that I had done have been changed - painted over and modified with body parts skewed and scaled. It was disappointing to see. But you can't get too upset as these things. At the end of the day it is their property so they do as they wish and the new versions must have been approved by Universal and the actors.....so I guess everyone else is happy with it. That is the way it goes....
Anyways, here are my originals.....
MR. BODHI
Years ago I designed a group of mascots for Vancouver based game developer Next Level Games. These simple, graphic characters, known as the NLG Family, were created to represent different aspects of the company's culture and were used in internal branding situations. As the company celebrated it's 15th year, they asked if I would design a new "family member", one that would encompass some new traits that the company has picked up along the way: wisdom/experience, awareness and consideration.
After several design rounds Mr. Bodhi was born. He is meant to be jolly and wise so visually he is somewhat reminiscent of Budai, the Laughing Buddha, and his silhouette is meant to be similar to the Mandelbrot Set. His long flexible arms enable him to hug any sized frame and his colours are warm and inviting.
It was a little challenging designing a character to fit in with a group of designs I did so many years ago...but in the end I think he turned out pretty well.
