(1/8)It's been awhile, let's get back to super serious stuff, like some
#halo
characters. Let's talk about the hunters today, which I was fortunate enough to help bring to life.
Hi, 你好
#IamPOCinPlay
Long time vet but new to the Twitterverse.
My name is Shi Kai Wang, go by Shiek in the game world. I'm a Taiwanese turned Taiwanese-American working at
@Bungie
for 20+ years. Started as concept artist for
@halo
now currently art directing
#Destiny2
(1/8) Let's stay on
#halo
weapons for a bit shall we? Let's talk about the
#needler
this time, which also seems like a fan favorite. It was a fun one to concept.
Distinctly remember saying to Jason Jones that I can’t wait when Destiny wasn’t compared to WoW, Borderlands, Warframe and that we secured our own corner.
Glad to know we are meta now.
No surprises here. Color study of this awesome scene from Big Trouble in Little China, with some Exos :)
Knocking this out before hitting some of the recommendations.
#DestinyattheMovies
#Destiny2art
#destinyart
Color studies again, took longer than expected. This time putting
#Destiny2
characters in classic movie scenes. See if you can guess which movie this is from. Answer in series post below, no cheating.
What movie scene should I try next?
#DestinyattheMovies
#destinyart
Hey
#teammonster
. Fear not, save your strength for another fight.
For now, go check out Zombot studios, the guys who made the set and some of your other favorite ornaments in
#Destiny2
Imma do this twice cuz it's that awesome. We've partnered with ArtStation this time around to showcase our awesome artists' badassery. Please go take a look and create traffic jams :)
Thank you to D2WQ Art Team for the fantastic work, per usual!
(5/8)The Phantom was based on the cobra. The graceful yet aggressive posture it has, and how it's narrow in the front but broadens out was such a beautiful natural design. That curvature doubled up as the negative space to hold vehicles under it's 'wing span'.
(8/8)Additions of shield and fuel rod were done once in game and playtested. As it helped to round him out better as a unit beyond just a melee character, hence why they were never in the sketches.
Alright, thank you for listening. Hope it was another fun read!
(7/8)Closest sketches before it became final. We wanted a clear state change for combat vs. non. So you can see the idea was to have his chest collapse nicely into his waist to protect all. Hence the curved mid section, and turtling. Spikes were added by Paul Russell.
Did you read through the whole TWAB?
#teamdino
is the winning armor set!
That’s cool, I guess.
Thank you Dipo Muh for the awesome concepts. Go check out his work!
(4/8)As more iterations happened the idea turned more towards a couple of things, mainly the fiddler crab as the animal inspiration. The thought was that a giant melee arm would be an interesting trait for this heavy trooper, therefore emphasized on that.
(2/8)The hunters
#Mgalekgolo
were born out of the sandbox necessity to have a heavy trooper to balance against the agility of elites, the medium range jackals, and short range grunts. The sandbox gameplay helped to draw a box on what these guys would feel like.
This got concepted the same time this
#haloelite
concept was made.
Gave the Elite two opposable thumbs, and because of that, wanted the weapon to be symmetrical in some similar way. Hence the top and bottom similar language and the vertical up and down firing.
(6/8)Once the feel was set, it was time to figure out the details. If the concave portion can house the vehicles, where do the units come from?
I attempted to have units come out the back. But the Spirit already proved 360 engagement was too much fun.
Lots of nostalgic posts from folks today. Here’s one more. Most favorite part in working on this was to give meaning to the tree and wolf symbol in IB.
(4/8)After many failed attempts to curve the Spirit, I sketched out a promising silhouette.
This was the very first sketch of the now Phantom.
It finally had a new but interesting personality, AND animalistic. Which animal?
(6/8)Like I said in other threads, we never worried much about lore of these guys in CE. It was only later when Halo became popular, we went back and asked what are these guys? And then that note I wrote down became the backbone of hunters' anatomy.
(5/8)The second were the worms. That was inspired by then Jason Jones' engine tool of cellular automata which I've later used as VFX that I'll get to in another thread. But the idea of the collective to form a whole is the basis, and thus I scribbled it on the sketchbook.
(7/8)Thus the magic tractor beam. Using the same technology as the Spirit holo tractor beams, the Phantom employs it as a tube. But this time to drop units down one by one to be engaged from any which direction, ready for sandbox fun.
(3/7)So I'll state this upfront; the Spirit was always concepted with the tuning forks as the back. A miscommunication on direction for animation and 3D made it so the tuning fork faced forward. Ultimately we all agreed that felt more aggressive so we left it :)
(3/8)Initially, I tried redesigning the Spirit with more of a curved shape. As indicated by this sketch here. But it lacked the personality the Spirit already had. So this felt like a half, or step backwards. The curved transport also proved hard to carry units functionally.
Having fun with
#2021artgoals
I’ll admit, painting isn’t my strong suite. BnW is my clutch, my go to. But let’s make it fun. So let’s start with
#exocolorstudy
Join me!
#イラスト練習中
#destinyart
@LateNightHalo
@TheIshikawaRin
@KrimsonBat
@EricWaffles
There was no narrative reason specifically. Halo 2’s arbiter armor was very cool in color which didn’t match the original concept I did. And halo 3’s shaders were tuned to feel more aligned to original concept. Which feels more balanced with warm and cool playing off each other
When not drawing super serious alien stuff for
#halo
and art directing super serious stuff for
#destiny
, I like to do quaint takes on made up moments.
Usually done in brush style to reflect my roots from Taiwan.
Have a look!
(2/8)Like I said earlier, I didn't quite like the Spirit design. When Halo 2 came around, we were all in the mindset of improving on CE, box product mentality.
Given that chance, I wanted to give the
#halocovenant
dropship a more animalistic personality.
Let's start the new year with the old! I promised to talk about
#halo
and the concept choices for a bunch of those, so here we go.
Going to focus on the
#halocovenant
as that's the race I had the opportunity to make the most impact.
Probably my favorite weapon, even beating out the sword and needler, because it was my first. Similar to the ghost.
Which is why for my 20th replica, I opted for a plasma rifle. Thank you
@RatedEforEric
for the beautiful replica! Check it out.
(8/8) Thanks again for reading. This isn't as fun fact filled imo since it was pretty smooth and direct in terms of development of the weapon. Hope it was entertaining regardless.
(7/7)At the end, it worked, but I've always felt it was a little out of character in design language, hence the redesign for the Phantom. Which I'll get to next.
Alright, hope this was a fun read!
(3/8) As stated earlier on the plasma rifle post, the back ends of the plasma rifle seeded the idea of more covenant weapons with details that broke the silhouette of the weapon. Because it was already seeded, the animalistic inspiration was more subconscious than direct.
The very first thing I remember concepting was the
#haloghost
. Marcus
@game_fabricator
had asked me to take a stab at refining the design. He had already mocked something up in prototype when I got to
@Bungie
. It wasn't too different from this
(6/8) Remember the old spear gun prototype demo? Then you know we already had the tech to stick projectiles into physics objects. So it only made sense for the needler's projectile to stick in to your enemies.
Pink color was to stay complementary to UNSC colors to stand out.
(5/8) I thought it would be fun to see your alien ammo directly instead of numbers. The needles thus acted as counters.
So how does blamite crystals shard up when you reload it? Answer to that, is video games :) It's more visible to see a big ammo pickup than tiny shards.
(6/7)It's a happy accident that when the doors open for the Spirit you can pick off enemies. It wasn't planned that way, but the way our physics worked in our engine with units attached to vehicles allowed them to be separate, and thus hittable with projectiles once opened.
(7/8) The final model for CE was done by the great Robt McLees,
@mehvechan
can attest. I helped with the VFX on the projectiles and shader tweaks.
Needles grouping and exploding? That was
@32nds
Jaime Griesemer's design idea I believe. I just made it go kabloowie in pink.
D2 armor is superior in every way. It's more badass. More silly. More fancy. More ridiculous. More awesome. You can choose "D1 armor is better" as the hill to die on, but at least you're dead.
(2/8) At this time of Halo CE development, sort of got handed anything that was halo covenant related, having now done the grunt, multiple iterations of the elite and the plasma rifle.
Give the non-traditional alien weapons to that new Asian kid :)
The journey through the Light and Dark saga has been nothing short of a creative odyssey.
Destiny 2: The Final Shape Art Blast featuring Destiny 2’s talented art team via
@ArtStationHQ
.
🎨
(2/7)Seems obvious now, but the dropship is born out of necessity of a open space game that needed to introduce units that didn't seem 'gamey', as in magically appearing behind blockades.
How do you get more enemies into an open space encounter? Alien dropships of course!
Because nature in general was a big inspiration for all things covenant, the plasma rifle took inspirations from sea life. Mainly sharks and remora fish. Loved the juxtaposition of a big simple shape with smaller detailed shapes as accents.
Last one for the year, let’s put it all together now.
Thank you all for the love and support. Here’s to a new year with new art!
#artvsartist2020
#faceyourart
#年賀状イラスト2021
The initial intent was to make those as ammo that needs to be plugged in to shoot. That proved too hard to figure out in animation and visible in fp, so that idea got reduced to just detail back fins.
BUT! served as the ground for the needler :) which I'll talk about next
(4/7)There was no animal this was based off of unfortunately. I was more inspired by a lot of what Doug Chiang did on Star Wars vehicle designs at that time, bringing in clean organic shapes with hard edges. Utility based design brought truck references with the exhaust pipes