Dark Matter Base

  Heres some concepts for the Dark Matter base in Defiance which is located off the shores of San Francisco. On Defiance, i was charged with fleshing out a lot of the design and visual of the Dark Matter faction of the game and getting to explore the main base of these guys was a tonne of fun. This is pretty close to the end game stage and is supposed to present a sharp visual contrast from the other areas of the game particularly the rolling hills and post-apocalyptic civilization feel of marin.
  The first image is a pulled out shot of the overall base, the second is a closeup shot of the front section of the base right before the bridge which is a checkpoint of sorts. The final image is an interior shot that also served as a Dark Matter interior design reference shot for all other dark matter interiors. The fractal pattern and monotone cool color scheme that can be seen in the other dark matter designs in my previous post, can also be seen in this image.

EMC Tech

 Heres some vehicles and props i designed for the EMC faction in defiance. I threw up some of the sketches i did to figure out where we wanted to take the design of these vehicles/props, these were blocked in really quick and dirty and arent the most presentable but were essential in helping me figure out what my art director was looking for.
  The mobile armory in particular started out as a simple weapon vending machine which seemed like such a cliched idea but with the ideas and guidance of both me and the art director, gradually evolved into a mobile weapons distribution unit created by the Von Bach conglomerate. The idea for the final design is that it would basically be two parts, the front end of the vehicle is where the engine and computer would be and the back unit would be a modular container like device that can be refilled simply by swapping it out. This is attached and reinforced by metal struts and there are turret attachments on the vehicle to defend it from attacks. The vehicle crawls through the wasteland on treads and has a plough in front to clear the way and protect itself from mines.
The other props are a bit more straightforward.

Dark Matter

 On defiance i was lucky enough to be tasked with developing a visual language for the Dark Matter faction of our game. The Dark Matter are a military alien collective that have spun off from the Votan and have taken over San Francisco as their base in the bay area.
  I started out with quick black and white sketches and gradually with the help of my art director and designers, started steering them in a direction that we felt confident of. The designs ended up being very angular with a pale, drab color scheme that we felt fit the militaristic theme of the Dark Matter units, and was kept intentionally well worn and dark to contrast against the pale white and red of the Dark Matter soldiers and other units.. This was punctuated by hints of high tech machinery and u.i projections here and there, creating areas of rest in the white outer casing of the buildings and areas of detail in the tech details and machinery. We used fractal patterns as an interesting design theme that we overlaid on our buildings as a high spec texture and also used in our energy fields, an idea i suggested that made it into the final. This fractal theme was carried through to many parts of our dark matter design from environments, props to characters.

Sutro Bathhouse

  One of the first things i worked on when i got to Trion was the Sutro Bathhouse concept. This task was ironically fitting seeing that i had just moved down from the bay area and had just visited the actual location 2 months prior.

  As my bay area folk might know, the sutro bathhouse was an enclosed swimming pool built in the 19th century by the sutro family and boasted beautiful wrought iron structures with glass panels and windows, it sadly burnt down in the 60's and the current site is an abandoned piece of land with some of the foundation of the old building showing through and deposits of sea water. I was asked to create a concept for sutro bathhouse in the San Francisco wastelands of Defiance, in which a race of scrapper robots had taken over and were using the site as a scrapyard/factory to create new units. Another idea that i was asked to play around with was the idea that the bathhouse had been restored by the Votans previously but had since gone to waste once again.

  After a lot of reference gathering to make sure what i drew was somewhat accurate to how the bathhouse would have looked, i started sketching and ended up with this!

Heres some reference for what it looks like today and what it looked like back in the day,