Generating environments and characters for the “Stranglehold” game was a special
journey for Stephan Martiniere and the Midway Games crew.
CGSociety :: Production Focus
By Paul Hellard
Stephan Martiniere needs no introduction to most people
familiar with our industry. As well as being an interesting
personality, Stephan can reel off a long list of TV shows,
movies, rides and books he has worked on, and now he
is in charge of the concept crew doing several projects with
Midway Games.
Stephan was asked how a working day was at Midway. He has no complaints, living here in Chicago for a little more than two years now. “It’s a great city, there are a lot of amazing architectural works by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright; I love it!” he exclaims. “I am still doing book covers on a regular basis as well as concepts for film and animation."
"‘Quantum Scapes,’ my second art book, was released last December. I am doing more presentations both for Midway and the art community at large and a Midway concept art book will be released in July with a lot of very cool artwork from Stranglehold and many other games.”
Martiniere began at Midway Games a little over two years ago as the visual design director for ‘Stranglehold’. His role was to put together and supervise a concept team to create the look for the project. Working closely with the art director and all the leads, their brief was to shepherd the vision through the production pipeline.
“Several months ago the concept team and I shifted gears,” he continues. “I moved to the position of creative visual director. I will continue to be involved with ‘Stranglehold’ until its completion.” The concept team are now also providing concepts and visual guidance for several other Midway games currently in production.”
The first step for the team was to come up with a look for the game. Environments, characters and objects are visual tools and can be used to enhance the story and convey many different emotions. “It was very important to me to create visuals that would affect a viewer’s perceptions and feelings,” says Stephan.
“The game had to feel very cinematic. Brian Eddy, our executive producer, gave me “visual carte blanche” from the very start. I cannot thank him enough for that. It allowed me, the art director Jason Kaehler and the teams to push the envelope.”
The Unreal Engine was very promising and opened up some great possibilities. Tapping into some existing visual material from John Woo’s cult classic “Hard Boiled,” Martiniere wanted to create a unique visual palette for each environment. “My environment concept team consisted of some very talented artists including Jung Park, Tae young Choi, Angie Lai and Bruno Werneck,” says Stephan.
The team would usually do one or two initial concepts for an area to set the mood for the team and with the help of their art researcher Michaelene Zawacki, they would gather references and start to explore different visual possibilities.
