Concurrent with my work on Aliens: Colonial Marines I was simultaneously helping to define the updated style change for the original Borderlands game. I ended up spending a great deal of time fleshing out that universe, including the creation of the game’s muse, Claptrap, among other characters and vehicles for the subsequent sequels.
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claptrap
One of my key contributions to the game was to help create a comedic muse Claptrap, who would offset the brutal nature of the world. The art director, Brian Martel, saw a random sketch that I had uploaded as a joke to the studio server (the most generic robots I could come up with) and loved his simplicity. We spent some time and acted out the new character really leaning into exaggerated cartoon animation and working that into his design. I loosely based Claptrap’s design on friend Jay Shuster’s design for Wall-E at Pixar.
form language and style development
hyperion corp
As a child of the 1980s, I grew up with Transformers, Terminator, Robotech, and Robocop, to name a few, and drew very liberally from those classic designs. Prior to my joining the studio I worked in film previz, so I cut together some reference material that inspired me during the design phase, pulling from nature and films, and handed that to the animators to be inspired from. I did the same with the vocal effects for the sound designer.
sanctuary
I developed the concept that one of the game’s manufacturers developed a line of automated factory ships that are launched all over the galaxy to mine raw ore to create their weapons. This one was abandoned for whatever reason and over time was consumed by the landscape until only it’s enigmatic conning tower was left sticking out of the ground. Over decades travelers slowly built up the town, unbeknownst to them what lie beneath them.
vehicles, environments, & dlc’s (downloadable content)
The Train: I am a huge fan of Doc Brown’s flying locomotive from the end of the film Back to the Future III, so that notion stuck around for a bit. The art director and I ended up settling on something more contemporary instead of being too on-the-nose Western, so we leaned more on a bulky, Eastern-bloc diesel locomotive. To push it further away from the real-world, we made the train levitate and ride a monorail which would provide a cool visual with dynamic, articulated arms. This would permit the level designers to have fun placing the tracks on any surface.
