GAMES WORKSHOP / WARHAMMER CAMPAIGN
I met with Games Workshop in their offices in Düsseldorf and was asked if I would like to work on campaign for the opening of the Warhammer Stores across Europe.
The concept was to create graphics unique to each city that a new store was opening in. Each city would have a two promotions. This idea evolved while I was working on the project.
Originally, two weeks before the opening of the store flyers would be distributed around the city. These flyers would show a graphic in which the city was demolished saying "WE ARE COMING". Then during the second week another set of flyers would be distributed with licensed characters from the Warhammer series placed into the scene.
This changed over the course of the development. It was decided that showing a city damaged could be taken offensively by those who were not familiar with the store. The change was made so that the first week promotion would show the normal city with black silhouettes of the characters and then the second week the characters would replace the black outlines. Thus, the new style of promotion would not be taken offensively or in the wrong light.
Additionally, we planned on using the images on t-shirts, large scale posters, and decoration for the stores.
All of the graphics were completed and unfortunately the UK offices decided not to develop the idea farther. However, I really enjoyed working on the development process of the idea and felt the graphics were still worthy of appearing in my portfolio. I want to thank Alessandra Leone for the opportunity to work on the project, because she was brilliant to work with!
Because Enschede, Neatherlands would be our first city, I decided to build the various buildings separately and as vectors so that they could be easily manipulated. I am glad that I did this rather than painting the buildings, because I would have had to start the whole project from scratch. Here we see the church from Oude Market, first damaged and then repaired.
Once again, the damaged right portion of the city was built first and then the city was repaired. Because I was limited on time and knew that once the characters were placed I kept the city simplistic, because the characters could possibly cover up portions of the buildings. However, the idea was to recreate the actual buildings from Oude Market.
By creating each portion of the city separately I was also able to easily change the layout from portrait to landscape. Hear above you can see the right side of Oude Market and the light poles.
Even though I do not play Warhammer, I am familiar with the figurines and sets designed by the players. Thus, I wanted the city to have a feel as if they were designed to be set up on a gaming board. They did not have to completely accurate in detail, but allude to the city of Enschede. The monument was key to give the city its look.
During the course of the project the sky went through three changes. First it was more read with puffy clouds, which can be seen on the right. Then to give it a more Gothic look the sky was given a dusty color, but still had puffy clouds. The color was approved, but we ended up changing it to a more hazy cloud cover as seen in the left image.
All of these graphics were completed in just over a week. So, I had to work fast and nonstop in order to produce them.
This was the test image. As you can see these were not the finalized clouds, and the Games Workshop logo appears versus the Warhammer logo. Also some details were not edited out from the character illustrations.
It was created to show how the portrait layout could appear in a cinematic style. With the hero character brought towards the front in slightly larger scale.
Also, I was limited to the licensed figures I could work with, so I wanted to first give my client an idea of what it could look like.
Also, I was limited to the licensed figures I could work with, so I wanted to first give my client an idea of what it could look like.
Here you can see the finalized landscape image where the hero character is smaller, the allowing for additional characters and the viewer to see more of the city. This also features the final cloud selection.
This is the finalized portrait layout for the image. Again this demonstrates that by creating every object separately I could easily manipulate them and move them around. If I had painted the image, I would have had problems changing between landscape and portrait. I also would have not have been able to make the changes to the city.
Working on this project was a true joy. It demonstrates that I am able to create graphics in various styles, which may or may not be seen in my portfolio. This project also shows that I have the ability to think ahead and begin to solve problems before they arise. The time constraints on this were a little tight, but I understand the importance of deadline, so it kept me on my toys and motivated.
email: kshinabery212@gmail.com