Halo Concept Art by various Bungie Artists

Halo Concept Art by various Bungie Artists

To make a great Halo game you need  awesome concepts and ideas. Ideas for plot, concepts for game play and most importantly, ideas for for what the game might look like. It is the concept artist's job is to take some of those ideas and turn them into on paper visions which will then help shape the game.

If you want a real world example at how important this is, look no further than Ralph McQuarrie whose concept design work for George Lucas is often cited as one of the key factors in the look of the Star Wars universe.

So making the of  Halo: Reach needed lots of ideas for how things might look.

This included the Elites, Covenant ships, weapons, landscapes, buildings and what our heroes might appear like. As a result of discussion, the artwork is revised and redrawn until everyone is happy.

Halo Reach has been released to an adoring fan base - this means there's a lot of Halo concept artwork lying around gathering dust so Microsoft has given all the artists permission to release their concept art for Halo to the internets.

Here's a selection of that work and other Halo games from various blogs of the artists themselves.

First up is a selection from Jaime Jones. Here we have Jaime's initial sketch of the promotional art that was eventually released as part of the pre Reach launch. Rather than doing a full drawing, a rough outline was drawn up and eventually worked into the final you see below. Is that Jorge lurking in the middle ground?

The final concept art image from Jaime Jones is his vision of the Covenant fleet glassing the planet Reach.

Your world is but glass?

To err is human; to curb stomp an Elite, divine

Neogaf member highlaw drew this wicked fan art inspired by Halo 4 - featuring the Mantis wreaking havoc on an elite who is surely out for the count.

A World Weary Kat?

Issac Hannaford has released two more spartan sketches on his site. He also has some cool development pictures of Catherine Halsey:

And simply because Issac can, here's a big gun:

Cortana and the Chief by Levi Hoffmeier

You might recall that Levi Hoffmeier has done a lot of concept art design work for Halo. He's a pretty impressive art  designer and he clearly loves Halo and has done some more imaginations on what Halo 4 might look like but I just love this picture of the Chief and his digital goddess, Cortana. Levi says he was "trying to channel 70's / 80's space opera covers."

James Hawkin's GOW3 concept artwork

You might have seen me take the piss out of this 'Savage Grenadier' but if you'd had followed the link you might have found this website by concept artist James Hawkins where he's put up some pretty cool images of the concept design work he did for the Gears of War 3 game. You've heard of it right?

Here's some of the images, full set is here.

The shotgun

Silverback design.

Halo 5 concept artwork released by 343 Industries.

It’s been fair while since the new Halo game teaser was released to eager fans and now Josh Holmes has finally given us a bone, here is some concept artwork of “ an early exploration of a new location that features prominently in a little game project we’re tinkering with…. “. Which obviously means Halo 5. Not that Halo 5 is actually called Halo 5 yet.



The artwork is by “Sparth” who has done a fair bit of design work for Halo as Lead Concept Artist. Josh announced that Sparth is now Art Director for 343 Industries which means Sparth's Halo vision will be an even more strong influence on the franchise.

I’m guessing but this appears to be some kind of ‘ship yard' or a hangar port. What do you think?

Atlantis Station concept art from Destiny

Here's another piece of concept art from Destiny. It appears to be called Atlantis Station and is seemingly derelict except for that blue light coming from inside. What lurks at Station Atlantis?

Halo 4 Requiem concept art by Sparth

Sparth (known as Nicolas Bouvier by his mum) has released three pictures of conceptual artwork that he did for Requiem i.e Halo 4

Destiny's conceptual artwork released by Bungie

The Vex - time travelling robots

Destiny Conceptual artwork by Bungie

New game Destiny has been revealed to the world and Bungie took a note from 343 Industries’ playbook and did the reveal with a set of concept artwork (albeit intermingled within a Vidoc of full of explanation).

Here’s some of the art that Bungie designers have done on The Fallen (Cabal), settings, cities and the Traveller, who’s true identity while probably be revealed in game 3…..

The Traveller

Mars' Exclusion Zone is controlled by the Cabal

You might recall this as the first image that leaked

The Black Garden. Which looks green.

The Mouth of Hell

Titan, Hunter, and Warlock classes in action.

Go Speed Racer, Go!

Concept art of Halo's Didact

Concept art of Halo's Didact as designed by Kenneth Scott of 343 Industries

Here's some more Halo 4 concept artwork. And some more art shots here.  

Checkout Halo: Epitaph

Commander Sheppard Fan Artwork

I was checking out Tash Vader's fantastic Tumbler site and spied this fantastic fan art of Commander Sheppard from the Mass Effect series. The colours are just amazing. Check out Muju's deviantART page for more wicked Femsheps!

Speaking of Darth Vader, here's some movie quotes.

New piece of Halo 4 concept art

Apparently this is some more Halo 4 concept art...... doesn't look Forerunner so it could be a mulitplayer map.

Found here.

J Bach's Halo 4 Concept Artwork

Humanity's most popular Boy Scout

Do you remember the live action Halo trailer that featured the Infinity? Of course you do. Here's some Halo concept artwork by one J Bach that helped the production of the advertisment. Bach has done a tour of duty at Lucasfilm so he would appear to know his stuff.

The picture below shows a scene from the trailer where the crew of the Infinity are attending it's launch event.

Bach notes that the trailer was going to feature the Master Chief but the scene was cut. He's kindly supplied some of the art for that scene however and a pretty cool one of some Forerunner structures being explored by some kind of humanoid looking figure. Bach notes "This last image was for a concept in which an ancient technology sitting undisturbed for eons is finally discovered by a young native boy."

Any body home? Yoo hooooooo...

The USNC Infinity

A chat about GOW: Judgement's artwork direction

Game Informer has an article on the direction that the artwork of Gears of War: Judgement may take. Chris Perna answers the questions - here's some extracts from the interview:

Game Informer: What was your approach when designing Gears of War: Judgment’s visual theme, and how does it compares with what the series has done in the past?

Garron Paduck

Chris Perna: I think one of the things that we want to get across is a lot more brutality of the Locust, a lot more fear. I think visually, it’s probably a darker theme than the other games as far as the Locust being scary again. We kind of got away from that a little bit over the course of the series. We’re trying to bring some of that back...some of the intensity, some of the fear. You know when we really concepted these things, they were stealers of children in the night. They were these ghostly figures. It was almost a survival horror game at one point. We kind of wanted to get back to the roots of the Locust and emergence day and show them as more vicious and fearsome.

The RAAM’s Shadow DLC also took place prior to the trilogy. Did that serve as any indication of what we can expect from the world?

Yeah, and I think we really learned a few things from RAAM’s Shadow as far as quality and visual bar and things like that. I think that visually, this will be more of an enhancement from that. We’ve tweaked the engine a bit and added advanced bloom and different types of effects, and it’s really pushing things in a different direction. So, I think it will be an evolution from RAAM’s Shadow.

Can you tell us a little bit about the process of designing a younger Cole and Baird?

Baird

Yeah, sending him back was kind of tricky. Baird is actually an officer when he starts out. He’s cropped and trimmed. What we did was take a look at Baird in Gears 1, and he was acne-scarred. Denis Leary was part of the inspiration for Baird. You know, just this wisecracking, kind of *** guy. If you’ve ever Denis Leary’s stand up he’s smoking and drinking and just kind of ripping. So, that was Baird to me anyway. So we took him and we gave him some acne scarring and some battle damage and dirt and that was Gears 1.

Pretty much throughout the whole Gears series, his fiction was getting busted down to private, and he was pissed about it and taking orders from Marcus. We took a look at where he was and then we said “well, what is he like as an officer? Well he’s fresh and he’s confident and he’s cropped and his hair is a little different, a little neater. His face doesn’t have acne. It isn’t dirty. And he’s a little bit younger and he doesn’t have the lines on his face and the battle wear.” So that’s what we did there. And Cole was an athlete, so he’s thinner and more agile. We kind of took him and made him a couple years younger and made his body a little more fit.

Shane Pierce's Gears of War 3 Concept Art

Artist Shane Pierce has put up some of the concept artwork he did for the Gears of War 3 game - mostly the images posted are of landscapes and buildings. Pretty awesome design work for the world of Sera!

Check out more of Pierce's artwork here.

Halo 4 Warhouse map concept art

Warhouse

The weekly update from 343 contained this wicked concept art for the Halo 4's multiplayer map Warhouse.

BS Angel says of Warhouse:

Inspiration for this map came from a wide variety of places, including oil refineries, giant mechs from films and cartoons, NASA imagery of gas giants, naval shipyards, and aircraft carriers, to name a few. We also referenced numerous well-developed sci-fi places throughout its development.

 

Because Warhouse is a symmetrical map, our greatest challenge was making sure players know where they are at any given point, and yet having it make sense as an inspiring visual story. There are lots of complex mirrored paths which could be overwhelming, so we had to develop landmarks and key features to give players a sense of unique position.

 

We wanted this playspace to be similar competition-wise to older symmetrical maps in previous Halos, so we sought influence from those, and also from the industrial close-quarters combat in more recent games. There are many paths from the center room, allowing you to surprise opponents from unexpected directions and separate them from their comrades. 

There are also numerous over-and-under pathways that can be used to sneak up behind opponents who are holding their ground. Since this map is symmetrical, one team doesn't have an advantage over the other based on where they spawn or what part of the map they control.