Fable: The Journey

OK the Journey is out now and to predictably mixed reviews. Regardless of what you think of Fable and Kinect games in general I'm very proud of the visuals in "Fable: The Journey" and to have worked with such an excellent Art/Animation team. I don't think I'd ever had so much fun, satisfaction or success in Art Directing a project so thank you; Annes, Elliot, Tak, Cris, Mark, Bertie, Rich etc (sorry, too many to list).

The Art team and the engine were fresh to the franchise so this was an opportunity do think sideways a bit. From the very beginning we set out to create something that would be familiar to a Fable fan without slavishly following what was there before. Hoping to introduce some unique stylistic elements and freshness to the visuals.

I wanted the visuals to be clean, easy to read and stylish. In this we were broadly successful. In particular, I think the Character treatment was wonderful, having a lovely chiseled and sculpted treatment. This connected well with the deliberate use of simple shapes and clean silhouettes in the landscape.

One of the things I'm most proud of are the 2D storytelling cutscenes (Frescos) prototyped by Annes and Myself and finally realised by Emrah Elmasli, Billy Wimblett and Skaramoosh.

This was my last game at Lionhead. Given the platform it's unlikely to be a big seller but for me, it was a big success and a real pleasure.

If I was to do it again now I think I'd try remove much more of the visual noise and stylise it even more.

P.S. I'm heartened that the stylistic direction was retained and developed further for the awesome looking, but alas never to be released (?) Fable Legends.

Milo & Kate

This was the interactive story of a young boy (Milo) and his dog (Kate) growing up in a new house by the sea "The Best Summer Of Your Life". 

A highly ambitious evolution of the Dimitri concept but this time utilising Microsoft's Kinect camera. This deservedly gained enormous amount of media interest worldwide. However the response was pretty evenly split along the lines of 'that's just weird' or 'that's truly astonishing'.

 

Visually I wanted to give the title a 'heightened reality' quality, where everything is essentially naturalistic but cranked up to 11. It was part of the brief that Milo was to be the most believable interactive cg character in popular culture. I think he probably still is.

Milo's world had to have a curious childlike quality and I decided to attempt this by having peculiar, arrangements and juxtapositions of content rather than it being overtly 'fantastic'. It was all about seeing the world through the eyes of a child. Seeing wonder in the ordinary.

This production was a first for us in many ways: Motion Capture, Facial lip-sync, Kinect camera inputs. It was also the first time we worked extensivly with artists from other industries: Cinematographers, Directors and Script Writers. Milo & Kate is a genuine phenomena and was key to communicating the, still largely unrealised, potential of Kinect to the world.

Milo's resting at the moment but there's plenty of him on the net. Here's some highlights:

The 2009 Milo And Kate E3 demo

Perer Molyneux presents Milo at TED in 2010

Survivors

Survivors really feels like 'the one that got away' to me. I think this could have been an awesomely entertaining title, and a great gamer's game. I think it could have been Lionhead's Syndicate.

The high concept: The Apocalypse has kicked off and you have to save yourself and your family as you travel across the US. It was a theme common to many disaster movies but most closely realised in the remake of 'The War Of The Worlds. The strap-line was going to be "What would You Do" and that sums up the thinking.

With FPS and action adventure elements combined with Lionhead's skill at building simulated worlds this would have been a classic. However M'Soft had some exciting new hardware (Project Natal aka Kinect) on the horizon and we seemed to be a good bet to take it on. Sorry to see this one go but exciting times ahead...

Project X. aka Dimitri, Eden Falls, Rockwell...

This was a bit of a marathon Blue sky project that soaked up a number of years for me.

The high concept was good. Essentially you played the role of a teenager boy growing up in a small town, making friends in the schoolyard, sneaking out, forming relationships, dealing with life, having adventures etc.

Despite it never being realesed I thoroughly enjoyed working on this project. It was my first truly challenging role as Art Director on a 'next gen' title and I had the joy of working with some fantastic artists; Kareem Ettouney, Christian Bravery, Mark Healey, David Le Merrer, Andrew Lindsay, Andy Bass to name a few but there were many others. Stylistically it was very promising. At the time I was very keen on the paintings of Norman rockwell and Edward Hopper so I pushed heavily for this to be set in 1950's USA. The prospect of 50s Americana with all the associated music and nostalgia is still very attractive.

The seed of the concept was definitely intriguing but the direction was muddy at best so it never found its feet despite multiple team reshuffles. Rune Vendler probably came the closest to pulling it off but the company was going through some upheaval so it was parked in favour of something more 'commercially' viable. The fundamental idea behind it was somewhat resurrected in Milo and Kate some years later, but that's another story.

Black And White 2

Most of the Art Direction heavy lifting on this one was done by Christian Bravery. Nice job too.

Fable

I was lucky enough to be part of the development team for the original Fable. 

These digital sketches were some of my studies for the Hook coast level; a fishing/trading port on a particularly windswept part of Albion.

 

In theory I was the Executive Artist on the team but really this was a secondment for me. I was drafted in as an experienced Lionhead developer to help Big Blue Box get the title finished. However, as well as providing oversight and mentoring I did create a chunk of content for the game including The Guild, the Temple Of Good and the Temple Of Evil but there's not much trace of these now.

Black And White

Populous The Beginning

A much more visually and technically advanced take on the Populous theme. Actually it brought Populous properly into the RTS genre. It was a fantastic team lead and inspired by Alan Wright. All in all a very enjoyable project. I left E.A. to join the Lionhead Studios start-up before the game's completion but I can fairly consider myself to have been the art lead on the team.

I understand that people are still playing POP3 (as we referred to it) today, which is very satisfying if a bit crazy.

Dungeon Keeper

This was a good one. I remember one day Peter M' coming up to me and asking if I could put together a visualisation of a maze/dungeon thing to help him communicate an idea he'd had. A month later we were developing dungeon Keeper.

Quite an inventive title which again spawned many imitators. Mark Healey did a great job as the Lead artist on the project but I had a 'hands on' part to play as well as my Head Of Art role. I remember it being enormous fun to work on, a really buzzing team.

I was particularily proud of the map and Torture Chamber screens and am struggling to find copies of them to post. If anyone has them stored, please give me a shout.