xcom 2: War of the chosen
I had the pleasure of Art Directing the outstanding art team at Firaxis Games on XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. Having been the franchise character lead since the inception of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, it was exciting to reimagine some of the original biomes and themes. This experience was a real pleasure and a highlight of my career. Please see the captions on the images and videos for details and image credits.
I lit and rendered the four Chosen tiers for our marketing team.
I did a quick material and lighting pass on a WIP model of the Chosen Assassin! Models by Matt Kean, Aaron Yamada-Hanff, and Alan Denham.
I created the Chosen Comm Link vignettes with character assets, mixed some animations in matinee, lit, and rendered.
I lit and rendered these Resistance Heroes for our marketing team. Huge props to the amazing Stephanie Iannone. She did an amazing job as the Lead Character Artist on this project and took the hero customization system to the next level.
I created the Resistance Faction Leader Comm Link vignettes with kitbashed character assets, mixed some animations in matinee, lit, and rendered in UE.
I created the Faction Comm Link vignettes with character assets, mixed some animations in matinee, lit, and rendered.
I lit and rendered these Lost for our marketing team. Lost models and materials by Alan Denham.
I painted over the fog pod model by Andrew Griffin to give an idea of what the effects from the fog pod might look like 20 years later.
After working with the concept team on the initial crash-site moods, I kitbashed and lit existing environment and FX assets to create the Fog Pod vignette previs to help illustrate the mood of the 20 year old fog pod crash sites. Toby Franklin and the rest of the environment team ran with this idea and created the outstanding in-game vignettes you see in the Abandoned Cities.
Abandoned City Biome
Biome leads: Toby Franklin (art) / Brian Hess (level design) / Steve Jameson (FX)
Sewer / Subway Biome
Biome leads: Justin Rodriguez (art) / Matt D’Arcangelo (design)
Chosen Stronghold Biome
Biome leads: Neal Jany (art) / Brian Hess (design)
Alien Xenoform Biome
Biome leads: Morgan Hill (art) / Brian Hess (design) / Zeljko Straklj (tech art)
First pass shell screen
Shell screen paintover
In game shell screen
Andrew Griffin did a great job on the new shell screens in WOTC. I did a quick paintover of his first pass layout which he took and ran with to elevate them even further. Additional PO examples below.
Abandoned City first pass
Abandoned City paintover
Stronghold Sarcophagus first pass
Stronghold Sarcophagus paintover
Subway first pass
Subway paintover
These are example pages from our living art wiki which we used as a infohub and dev-blog for the team. This was primarily maintained by our Art Manager Brian Theodore and me.
These are example pages from our living art wiki which we used as a infohub and dev-blog for the team. This was primarily maintained by our Art Manager Brian Theodore and me.
These are example pages from our living art wiki which we used as a infohub and dev-blog for the team. This was primarily maintained by our Art Manager Brian Theodore and me.