A Guided Tour Of Battleborn's Art

Thanks to Borderlands, Gearbox's original IP are known as
much for their art styles as their gameplay.

Thanks to Borderlands, Gearbox's original IP are known as
much for their art styles as their gameplay. For Battleborn, the developer is once
again aiming for a distinctive look, one that can accommodate the immense creative
variety present in the game's universe-spanning cast of heroes. Join us as
several Gearbox artists and animators walk us through some of Battleborn's
concept art and explain why they're excited to be working on the new project.

Battleborn's art director, Scott Kester, was kind enough to
provide his thoughts on several pieces of concept for the game, which you can
see below. Kester served as a character concept designer for the first two
Borderlands games before taking the reins for Battleborn, and his comments
provide great insight into the creative process and goals that Gearbox's art
team is striving for.

We've also included quotes from several other Gearbox
designers and animators, who we spoke to while visiting the studio. Nick Wilson
(who stymied
me with a Borderlands Easter eggway back in the day) is Battleborn's lead
visual FX artist, and he explains how his team's work helps make each character
feel unique while unifying the art style as a whole.  Additionally, animation producer Trey
Davenport and senior animator Dia Hadley explain their approach to bringing Battleborn's
eclectic characters to life.

Finally, Gearbox has brought on Michel Gagne to serve as
Battleborn's effects director. Gagne is an accomplished animator who has worked
on dozens of feature films, including The
Iron Giant , Brave , and the Star Wars: Clone Wars television series.
Gagne's hand-animated art style is unmistakable, and after he entered the video
game industry with 2011's Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, Gearbox jumped at the
chance to work with him.

You can click on each piece
of concept art to view a larger version of the image.

Kester: This is an early concept of the Jennerit Empire's home world. My
goal is for people to be shocked when they see this game and the variety of
content that's in it. We have these factions, and hopefully when you get a look
at somebody, you get an idea of where they're from, and when you see the world
they come from, they should feel at home there. I hope that when you see art
like this or you see Rath or Calderius in this world, you say, "Okay, that's
where this guy is from." It looks unified but could almost feel like different
games.  When I see what we're building
here, you'd think a whole game would be wrapped around that, and it would just
be sci-fi, gothic-cathedral TRON land, but that's just a section of what we're
doing.

Kester: It was important to us to make the minions iconic.
We tried to give a look that was understandable and approachable and made sense
within our world. He's kind of cool, kind of badass, but at the same time he's
kind of silly. We tried to give them an aesthetic that had a lot of character
and style, but wasn't just a joke.

Kester: We knew we wanted a spider-mech because we all love
spider-mechs and we all love robots, but we needed to find a way to give them a
certain charm and a little personality. We added humanistic qualities to them.
Why would you ever make a robot that has human hands when it doesn't need them?
Why wouldn't it just have guns mounted to it? Well, because it's cooler to have
the robot actually hold something.

Davenport: What's really important in the central animation
team, is that we're big on ownership. So when somebody gets assigned a
character, there's always an owner...whoever owns that character helps bring
different identities to the characters that come into the pipeline. While we
keep the [animation] style consistent by working with everyone as a team, we're
also able to give each character a unique identity simply because everybody has
their own visual take [on their own characters].

Hadley: When we first started Battleborn, [we had] the silhouettes
of all the characters – the first 15 characters or whatever – and [I remember] how
different they all were. When I first looked at them, as an animator, you start
drooling – especially when the tech guys say, "Hey, we've got all sorts of
memory you can use." And we were like, "Alright, every [character] will have
their own animation set, and their own – everything." So, just the run cycles
alone...everybody has a distinct run cycle, so if you see a character running out
of the corner of your eye, you can distinguish who they are right off the bat.

Coming Up Next: Gearbox discusses the importance of visual effects and establishing the tone of Battleborn...