ROVIO | ART DUMP

My goal with Gary was to create a benchmark hero character that would help set the sculpting and texturing style of our future characters. We also ended up using him on multiple prototypes that we were developing at the time.

Temporary rig and pose for mockups.

Highpoly sculpt

Initial basemesh that I developed together with Antoine Vrablec - The plan was to use this basemesh for future characters and prototypes.

Units concept for Battle Merge game prototype

Beards & Hair style ideas

Little guy on the left was a concept by Sam Nassour. Little dude on the right is my pitch to make him more square/chunky/bulkier. Ended up somewhere between those 2.

Basemesh - used this as a base to generate all sorts of characters for our prototype games

Infantry unit. Again, concept on the left was by the amazing Sam Nassour. On the right is my idea.

Infantry unit

At some point our game was not only about merging units with units, but also units with other Artifacts or items you would find as you play. In this case i believe it wouldve been Infantry + Ice Crystal.

Glacial chop chop

Taking early UI blockout done by Jesus and giving it a 1st concept pass

More environment concept ideas for each game stage

Eventually our Merge prototype turned into "Battle Mage", a mix between merge with auto battler/auto chess play style. Environment, props, characters, rigs and anims by yours truly XD Except the skeletons - Miika, our programmer, did those!

Screengrab from my 3dcoat texturing scene! This was one of the many levels/floors we were going to have in our game.

Again - all quick prototype assets that I did in a few hours (the game took a bit longer hehe). Goal was: make them cool and somewhat of the art style the game will eventually have but as fast as possible.

Again - really quick Hero prototype model, done in few hours using just bake textures from Marmoset mixed with some 3dcoat touch ups.

oh we also did a Bunnies prototype, but this is all i have from that one really! Concept by Sam Nassour!

Serafia - I had the chance to work a little bit on the early concept idea for this Hero, then Antoine Vrablec jumped in and did an awesome job finishing the character design up. Really loved working on this one.

Highpoly render straight out of ZBrush.

What seems to be the only Serafia WIP shot I managed to keep with me...

Some early Serafia UI Mockup

Agent 22 - Just like Serafia, Antoine Vrablec did the concept of this guy <3

I also worked on about 4 different Player avatars. Sadly I don't have the final renders for these, but at least I have a WIP ZBrush screenshot! :)

WIP of player avatar. Zbrush screenshot.

And the full lowpoly model. I think it took me about 2/3 days to set up the lowpoly and all the textures.

Part of my job on Hardhead Squad was also to help manage and feedback our Outsourcing partners: Rocksalt Interactive. I would usually do a couple of passes of feedback and later on would take the whole HP and do a final polish pass / QA.

Before vs after GIF.

Before vs after my polish pass. This awesome concept was made by Andre Rocca! :)

Before vs after GIF.

Another Hero QA pass just to bring it closer to our style.
Another design by Aleksi Rokka :)

Before vs after GIF

Found this one sheet where I just went through quality of life feedback: adressing bevels, proper thickness, clean intersections, weird pinches and wobbles, etc.

Line up of all the heroes I got to contribute with feedback and my own sculpt tweaks. Most credit goes to Rocksalt really for all their awesome work and our character designers: Antoine Vrablec, Andre Rocca, Aleksi Rokka and Sam Nassour