"Zippy"

The original sketch that launched ClapTrap.

I was given carte blanche to create the enemy cannon fodder in the form of simple robots akin to the battle droids from the Star Wars prequel films. As robots have been a passion of mine since childhood this was a dream task. I pulled all of the reference material that inspired my from my youth (eg: Robocop, Robotech/Macross, Transformers, to name a few).

Once the design was established I cut together a film of material for the modeling and animation departments to reference; the natural world as well as other popular culture media. As part of my methodology, I have always listened to specific music and sounds while designing. I handed some of those audio cues from films I liked and encouraged to the sound designer to create his own take.

Sanctuary

As a designer I lean upon a scenario, or narrative, from which to base my design decisions. There was no reasoning behind why this town suddenly flies. So 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.

This information permitted me to explore form language and texture information, and more importantly gave the level designers something to work with when you see it lift off. There’s a build in logic.

Hover Train

Another fun background detail was this train that runs across the landscape. Like most of my other assignments there was a lot of freedom to develop what this would look like in the post-apocalyptic Borderlands world. My first thoughts went to a literal Western steam engine, which then embraced the sci-fi aspect of the game. 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.

Bandit Gyrocopter

Based on the original concepts by the talented Danny Gardner.

Pirate Skiffs

This design was an easy one to nail down. I unabashedly referenced Jabba the Hutt’s small skiffs, and luxury yacht from Return of the Jedi. No need to reinvent the wheel if it works…

For supplemental work on this project, visit the BORDERLANDS TRILOGY development journal

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