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Working with the good, the Skorge and the Unreal Engine 3.
CGSociety talks to Chris Perna, Art Director at Epic Games.

Concept of the Locust Palace

CGSociety :: Production Focus
16 December 2008, by Paul Hellard

As Epic Games’s art director for ‘Gears of War 2’, Chris Perna shouldered the responsibility to make sure Epic’s games come through looking as good as possible. “My day to day routine has me working closely with an uber-talented, highly ambitious group of professional artists that I'm very proud to know,” Perna explains. Chris’s job is also to assess the design team’s needs and to establish the artistic vision for the games. “It's also important that I drive the art team and keep the guys motivated and focused,” he adds.

"By optimizing the Unreal Engine, we were being smart about streaming in levels and detail."

Concept of the Locust Throne

Designs
Working in a team like this meant that Perna would also need to be closely collaborating with Lead Designer Cliff Bleszinski. “Cliff likes to see the designs as they come online,” says Perna, “and we have great discussions on what things should look like and how they should function. Our lead gameplay designer, Lee Perry is also involved during these first, crucial stages of design. We all bounce ideas off each other, and even as the concept or modeling commences, we still bring them in from time to time to make sure things are progressing and will meet gameplay needs.”

Underhill WIP

New talent, senior guidance
Epic Games has hired some very talented extra artists since the original Gears of War, including character artists Mark Morgan and Mike Kime, environment artist Jordan Walker, animator Alex Whitney and technical animator Jeremy Ernst. Each has added some great talent to the team creating ‘Gears of War 2’.

For the most part, though, it was the original crew:

Concept artists:
James Hawkins and Shane Pierce.

Character artists:
Kevin Lanning, Chris Wells, Shane Caudle.

Environmental artists:
Mike Buck, Bill Green, Pete Ellis, Kevin Johnstone, Josh Jay, Mikey Spano, Demond Rogers, Chris Bartlett, Alan Willard, Grayson Edge and Ryan Brucks.

Animators:
Jay Hosfelt, Scott Dossett and Aaron Herzog.

Weapons, vehicles, gore, and miscellaneous creatures:
Pete Hayes and Kendall Tucker.

Cinematics:
Greg Mitchell, Aaron Smith.

The UI:
Maury Mountain.

FX:
Wyeth Johnson and Matt Hancy.

Epic Games in the States also tapped into trusted vendors like Technicolor, some very talented artists at Epic Games in China, as well as at the Microsoft Game Studios.

New script, new characters, new levels
Epic wanted to create a much larger scope for Gears 2. With Cliff Bleszinski, Lee Perry, senior producer Rod Fergusson and scriptwriter Joshua Ortega all had great brainstorming sessions that resulted in fantastic ideas for expanding the universe.

Dizzy Wallin

Locust Hammerburst WIP

Several new characters were added into the mix:

Dizzy Wallin:
Construct soldier, drives the Big Rig "Betty"

Tai Kaliso:
Spiritual soldier and big, bad wrecking machine

Maria Santiago:
Dom's lost wife

Ben Carmine:
Brother to Anthony Carmine in Gears of War 1

Stranded:
Upgraded characters of the Stranded populace.