David Hego - Rocksteady studios

David Hego put on a stunning visual presentation at Animex, He is the Art Director at Rocksteady and his focus in this session was Batman: Arkham Asylum.  He explained firstly how difficult it was bringing authenticity and originality to the Batman universe whilst remaining true to the licence. There have been many batman game titles over the past few decades and this game needed to break convention and set a benchmark for the studio.

A team of 40 - 65 is maintained at Rocksteady to keep up with their pipeline's demands., With a firm belief in quality over quantity the concept work is vital to creating the colourful yet dark environments in-game.  The cliche monochrome look adopted by Gears of war as an example was something the team wanted to sear clear from.  The locations needed to be:

• full of history
• feel lived in
• tainted
• contain as fewer elements as needed to maintain a P.O.F (point of focus)
• Warm versus Cool colour scheme

A Hyper Realistic visual style was achieved using semiotic imagery, highly detailed yet exaggerated fantasy visuals. The winning formula was the effect of contrasting elements in the designs (beautiful versus Ugly) that ultimately disorientate the player in their judgement.  Framing and lighting environments was key to suggesting points of interest in a scene, masking the surroundings in shadow.  With lighting swatches used between the team consistency was achieved. 

David Hego briefly presented character design sheets but very little detail was given, environments were the real focus and he mentioned influences such as Jean-Pierre Jeunet's work, director of"City of Lost Children". All in all a very nice presentation with some great imagery to look at, a real shame camera's weren't allowed really.