As I am focusing on the early conceptual work I will need to dig up images of early weapons silhouettes, character mood pieces and armour iterations, as well as preliminary ship designs in the game.
Initially the names I have gathered are "Isaac Hannaford", "Joseph Cross", "Dorje Bellbrook", and "Jesse van Dijk".
All of them are superb 2D and 3D concept artists at Bungie and have created a variety of work.
Joseph and Jesse have done a variety of incredibly detailed and polished pieces likely used for marketing and art pieces to represent the overall mood and feel of the game and solidify its environments in a beautiful way. I've collected a series of some of their environmental work showcasing the best sights and visuals in the game represented through their artwork.
Jesse van Dijk:
Jesse's work encompasses all that Destiny is and many of his paintings have been represented perfectly in the game and are instantly recognisable on sight.
These incredibly polished pieces however are very far down the pipeline and probably don't get past from artist to artist but are used for pitches, conceptual art compilation books, and hype generators. I'll use these images to help ground the mood and setting of my work but won't be used as direct references for design and iteration ideas.
Joseph Cross:
Similar to Jesse's work, Joseph has created some excellent character, vehicle and environment designs and will also be used as atmospheric pieces to ensure my designs are grounded on the world they would inhabit.
Isaac Hannaford and Dorje Bellbrook's pieces are far earlier in Destiny's timeline and a lot of their released work shows the conceptual stages of an idea and how it progresses to the finished product. These piece will be a lot more helpful in influencing my designs as they are created to illustrate their design ideas as opposed to a piece created for the audience and to sell the game.
Bellbrook's work is created to an impeccable quality often showcasing the iterations from his initial ideas to the fully fleshed out concept and its intended depiction for the game.
Dorje Bellbrook
Bellbrook has an excellent illustrative style to his work which lends itself perfectly to creating concepts for environments or levels that are easily understandable. The game of destiny is a mythical sci-fi adventure set in our solar system with the bodies of mars, earth, venus, mercury, and the moon as locations that can be explored by the player. Bungie had a difficult yet exciting job of turning a lot of these locations into something more that spheres of rock and gas.
For example Bellbrook has created several ideas for how lost human colonies could look like sunken in the jungles of venus, or in the dunes of mars, or the ruins of old earth.
These pieces really set the mood for the planetary environments. I love the comic book sort of style his concepts have. Though his early ideas begin as simple line work such as below its the finished ideas with the applied colour palette that really solidify the idea and its potential application to the game.
Often he will take his ideas into a 3D programme like Maya and create a block out to aid in his work generation and gain a better understanding in how the idea may work in a level or mission.
Dorje's work has given me excellent insight into environment production and its development in the conceptual stage.
However Hannaford focuses on far smaller assets in the game. Much of his work is centred around pieces that the player will use or interact with rather than be encased by. I'm talking about the various weapons used by the player throughout Destiny.
Below is an example of some early weapon frame ideas for the game created seemingly by combining existing modern day weapon parts together to create interesting and unique designs for futuristic human weapons.
I have collected and compiled a series of early silhouettes Hannaford has created for weapons some being developed further to refine their appearance to match the intended feel and functionality of the weapon.
Though many of the weapons aren't seen in the game its very clear that many of the shapes and components invented at this stage are seen in the final model as well as obviously having definitive features from modern stay weaponry to ensure they feel human and recognisable.
For example it is obvious that Hannaford used references of existing gun designs to influence his own ideas and concepts for the human arsenal he would need to generate.
This will clearly be something I need to consider when generating my own designs. Another set of stages Hannaford will also go through is the classic development from an interesting design, to a more developed and polished design to finally creating a simplistic 3D version of the weapon to finalise on how it may appear in game.
Destiny also creates weapons that the player will potentially choose for their cosmetic appearance as well as its function and so colour and design iterations also need to be created for the cosmetic pieces of the weapon that aren't essential to its functions.
I've assembled some examples of this in Hannaford's work:
Of all the artists researched currently I feel Isaac has the best example of his work flow and how his designs are generated as well as not being overcomplicated in its presentation and allows a viewer to understand the concept and visualise coherently how it could be implemented in game.
Thoughts:
Researching these extremely hard working and talented artists has really helped me gain a greater understanding of the world of Destiny and how it has been forged. All of their work is excellent and Hannaford's is sure to be used as my primary source of reference and inspiration when attempting to design one or two weapon concepts. Other items I am interested in are the various armour pieces created in a modular way for the game as well as the ships and vehicles the player can own. For character and armour work I would certainly have a greater look at "Daniel Chavez" as he has some excellent alien concepts or another artist "Ryan DeMita" for inspiration and reference as well as some of his work is also in ship iterations. Same goes again for Hannaford as he also has several excellent conceptual ideas for alien ships.
For now however and for this period of directed study I want to focus on weapon design as it is one of Destiny's key traits as it is a first person shooter and thus the generation and implementation of fun and unique weapon designs is essential to this game's mechanics and engagement with the audience.
In my next post I will hopefully have generated some silhouettes for some weapon designs and proceed to develop them further until I have some finished and grounded designs ready to be polished and made presentable as a portfolio pieces and potentially to impress and employer such as Bungie.
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