Creating a Weapon
How did the famous concept artist archived success of their own weapons and assets in games?
As junior designer making my way in the world of prop artists, I'm interested in weapons and armour concepts, I kept on practising and researching my way into the concept designer world. I wanted to explore different artist and see how they approached their work in the gaming industry.
This was the main goal for today, I started researching concept art from different games and analysing weapons and assets from various franchises and concept artist.
I researched various concept artists:
Greg Broadmore the concept designer behind famous movies like District 9, King Kong, The Chronicles of Narnia The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, The adventures of Tintin and the creator of Dr. Grordbort's Universe.
This is the blog were he posted more of his work.
I also visited Aaron Beck's Blog were I explored is concepts for mechas, weapons and other concept arts for Call of Duty, these are very interesting, I only played Call of Duty Black Ops long time ago, and yet I still recognise the weapons and style and I can see how these belong to the world of CoD.
I want to create something similar, making weapons and various armours and assets to make them belong and my game world.
A Look into the Guided book
This particular guide book is part of a series of books written by the Concept Artist Elliot Lilly with the participation of other prominent artists who have experienced working in the game industry.
Scattered thought the book there are notes, tips and cautionary tales that offers good advices, and the Autor personal stories.
The Autor help with the visual development of several projects notably: Rage, DOOM, Call of Duty and F.E.A.R. 3.
The Autor main focus is science fiction and he is specialized in environment, vehicle and weapon designs.
So I started researching on the games that I'm currently familiar with.
The Legend Of Zelda
An example of iconic weapon is The Master Sword from the Legend of Zelda Franchise. This iconic weapon is recognised worldwide from many gamers, casuals or not, and the powers that the sword has and the world it belongs to. The blade is wielded by Link the main protagonist of the franchise.
The Master Sword is a Legendary weapon recurring in the Zelda's franchise, the sword is often seen to choose and accept it's master by its own will, always a
hero who has gone through great trials that test his courage, wisdom and power to prove worthy of wielding it.
The blade itself is a double edge longsword with no fuller and a purple and blue hilt, these are the most common colour scheme, the hilt is gold in some games. The
Triforce is engraved on the base of the blade, and embedded in the crossguard in a gold gemstone.
The weapon has the power to repel evil forces, the blade is enchanted with magic that prevent it from being physically damaged, prevents the user to be influenced by dark forces and protect the hero from evil auras, curses and transformations. Additionally the sword holds the power to unleash a mighty beam that smites the enemies.
The Blade is also capable of absorbing energy in various forms, dispel magical barriers, and most important The Master Sword can seal evil, this sealing power can affect time itself.
Unthought not confirmed the Scabbard itself may be magical in nature and linked to the Master Sword which somehow always manage to appear in the hero's back when the sword is obtained and equipped.
The weapon itself is very iconic and for gamers who played the main games from the Zelda's franchise, at some point of their journey, depending on the game, they will have obtain and to use The Master Sword to defeat the evil forces that stands on the Link's journey.
Overwatch
Overwatch have unique guns for all their characters in game and all their weapons represent the personality of the character itself and play style. The team of developer of
Blizzard made sure that each one of their character had their own weapons in the Overwatch rooster.
An example would be
Reaper from Overwatch and his iconic
weapons: The Hellfire shotguns.
Reaper is one of the playable Heroes available in Overwatch 2.
Director
Jeff Kaplan game lead director of the Overwatch team, and made himself the public face for Blizzard as intermediate between the community and the game. He regularly posted on the Overwatch Online forums and created several videos discussing the characters, gameplay, abilities and the future of the game until the 20/04/2021 when he left the company after 19 years.
Reaper is one of the Character that Jeff Kaplan and his team created and released on the launch of Overwatch in 2016 as one of the playable hero for game.
Reaper has two of these guns and they are unique to him. They are very powerful looking and the gameplay of these weapons force the player to hunt and get up close to the enemies, the more close you get the higher the damage and spread will be wider, this blends well with reapers' concept of being a menace in the game. The guns will decrease in damage the further the enemy character is from Reaper.
The
Hellfire Shotguns are Reaper primary and only weapons type in his arsenal in Overwatch, The weapons have 4 bullets for gun and a 8 shots in total, he doesn't reload them. Once out of ammo, Reaper will toss them in the ground and summon another pair of twin shotguns. The weapons have no secondary fire mode, These shotguns have a wide range and spread up close, these Shotguns deal high damage at short range, but have drastic decrease of power past his range.
The weapons are great with dealing with "Tanks" (characters with high health bar and armour), due to their large hitbox, which allow the most pellets to connect.
Reaper's gun design is unique for him and it suits is playstyle of aggressive DPS hero, it rewards the players who know how to manage and distance themselves in the skirmishes and positioning during a match.
League of Legends
League of legends or LoL for short, is the most played game in the world, the game itself is "free to play" (for the ones who play it, this is not so true), and the game has the largest amount of playable character in any modern game.
The games offers a vast variety of champions for the player to purchase and use in normal and competitive matches, I will write about the
Darkin race and their unique weapons design.
The Darkin weapons are alive and made with flesh, these weapons are prisons for demonic entity know as Darkin, an ancient race of god-warriors who threatened to destroy the world that they were suppose to defend after insanity took control over their minds.
Aarox The Darkin Blade an ancient ascended god-warrior and one of the few Darkin remaining in the world of
Runeterra, he is one of the strongest of his kind, using
blood magic and demonic-like strength to vied a his Darkin Great sword, that is also part of his main body, the weapon itself is alive holding the spirit of Aatrox, after he was trapped inside of it for centuries, and now, finally free to destroy the world that imprisoned him.
The Darkin Great sword his part of Aatrox itself, the weapon was meant to be his prison after the Great Darkin war that threatened the the world of Runeterra, the entire Darkin race was killed or imprisoned inside various weapons, a few know sealed Darkin inside various weapons, other than Aatrox himself, are: A Longsword, a Scythe, a Bow, a Dagger and a Ballista.
The Darkin weapon that found a wielder will eventually to take control over their hosts body.
Aatrox took fully control of his host and the blade is able to control and use blood magic, absorbing it from his enemies, The weapon that Aatrox uses can increase of size and seems to be indestructible. the movements and function of this weapon are unlike other swords, in fact Aatrox can control the weapon as if he is controlling is own limb, the blade seems to be made of the same flesh of Aatrox himself.
Darkin weapons are sentient and alive and they will slowly take control of anyone who's will is not strong enough to endure the Darkin that resides inside of it.
There are other Darkin weapons that are lost in time and scattered across the world of Runeterra usually sealed away and forgotten, until someone or something unfortunate try to use them.
There are other Darkin are still sealed inside their weapon. These particular design of demonic weapons are really interesting concepts that eventually started to expand in the world of League of Legends.
Few example of other Darkin entity trapped inside weapons in Runeterra:
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