Call me late to the party, but I’ve been flipping through Ballistic Publishing‘s 272-page opus The Art of God of War III — and I like it. It reads like a cookbook for wannabe creature creators, chronicling God of War III‘s evolving monster designs throughout the game’s extensive development process. The luscious artwork is accompanied by insightful commentary and anecdotes from the game’s visual development artists and the phenoms at Sony Santa Monica Studios.

In addition to pages and pages of unseen concept art and reference sketches, The Art of God of War III showcases a surprising amount of content that didn’t make it into the final version of the game, including several monster designs that were (sadly) left on the cutting-room floor.

Art by Andy Park

Chimera

“This is a creature I initially designed way back during the previous game, God of War II…. I designed the Chimera thinking of the three personalities of the creature: lion, goat, and snake. They are one being, but they have three different brains and therefore, three different personalities. This illustration showcases the creature in all its vicious glory; with three heads vying to be the one that gets to kill the infamous Kratos. It’s a battle against Kratos and its inner self.” — Andy Park, Visual Development Artist, God of War III

Art by Izzy Medrano

Argus

“Definitely the tragedy of the game for the character department….After lots of sketches, including a pretty bad-ass multi-limbed elephant, the final design was a monstrosity covered with eyes meant to look like a very uncomfortable viral outbreak. It was this freakish frog-type thing with no mouth. I imagined that it would make an awful deep rumbling when out of camera, and all you would hear aside from that was the buzz of blood-bloated flies that follow it everywhere it went. I gave him the name Argus to tie in with the hundred-eyed shepherd from the old myths, and it stuck.

After he was modeled and built, he got scrapped because it was felt that he was too alien-looking. So I went back to the drawing board and came up with a hulking monster with one huge arm that also had tons of eyes all over his body in a herpes-like pattern. We even got the tech working so that all the eyes would follow Kratos, but he was scrapped again due to time constraints.” — Izzy Medrano, Visual Development Artist

Art by Andrew Kim and Cecil Kim

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Hi everyone! Guerrilla art director Jan-Bart van Beek here, with an interesting bit of news for the hardcore Killzone fans among you.

I was recently asked to contribute to a new volume in Ballistic Publishing’s line of digital artist master class books, titled d’artiste: Character Modeling 3. The request surprised me a little at first, because I’m not a character artist myself; I’m a director of character artists. As my job title implies, I direct other artists in the creation of assets for the Killzone franchise, making sure their output is consistent with the gritty, ‘hard sci-fi’ look for which our games are known.

However, I soon realized this would be a good opportunity to share my unique vantage point overlooking the entire character creation pipeline at Guerrilla. The resulting chapter has become a rather comprehensive overview of the character creation process used for Killzone 2. Taking Rico Velasquez and the Helghast Sniper as examples, the book walks the reader through every step of their development – starting with the rough initial ideas, and ending with their finalized in-game models. Along the way, various tools and techniques used at Guerrilla are explained in detail.

In addition to the chapter on Killzone 2, d’artiste: Character Modeling 3 also covers the works of Giovanni Nakpil and Cesar Dacol Jr., both renowned character modelers for major Hollywood productions such as Pirates of the Caribbean and 300. Their contributions to the book are nothing short of breathtaking, and I was extremely honored to see my name featured on the cover alongside theirs.

In short, if you’re a budding character artist or just a hardcore Killzone fan who’d like to know how characters are created at Guerrilla, d’artiste: Character Modeling 3 is a book worth tracking down. It’s the sort of resource I wish I’d had when I just started my career in the games industry. You can preview the entire book on the Ballistic Publishing website, or purchase it from their store in both limited and slipcased editions.

Publishing Information
ISBN #: Limited Edition: 978-1-921002-66-3 / Slip cased: 978-1-921002-67-0
Pages: 208 pages (Slipcased) / 208 pages (Limited Edition)
Authors: Cesar Dacol Jr, Jan-Bart van Beek, Giovanni Nakpil
Publishers: Daniel Wade, Mark Snoswell

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