BATTLETECH
BIGGER & HEAVIER METAL
THE PROJECT
- BattleTech video game series, by Harebrained Schemes, is well known and loved amongst fans for the giant mech battles. In 2019, Bond Street Film in Stockholm approached Nuen with a collaborative project for Paradox Interactive, the main publisher of the game.
- Paradox wanted to create a launch trailer for BattleTech latest expansion, Heavy Metal, which will be shown at their main convention PDXCon 2019.
THE MISSIONS AND CHALLENGES
- Create marketing materials for the upcoming launch of Heavy Metal, aiming to the hardcore fans at PDXCon and later publicly on Paradox’s Youtube channel, mainly focus on introducing the new mech additions to the game.
- The trailer required a series of 7 highly detailed key arts at 4K resolution to be produced in a tight timeline of two weeks.
- All of the key arts needed to have separate and fully detailed layers of elements which later will be animated to create depth with parallax.
THE OUTCOMES AND IMPACT
- Big mechs in huge hangars and epic lighting pleased the nerdy gamers of BattleTech.
- The trailer which heavily featured Nuen’s art draw a lot of attention to the expansion of BattleTech during the PDXCon 2019 in Berlin and has nearly 800.000 views on Youtube.
- The revenues of Paradox Interactive during the fourth quarter of 2019 are mainly attributable to BattleTech: Heavy Metal sales, according to the company’s year-end report.
CLIENT'S TESTIMONIAL
“ Nuen did an outstanding job with our production, his attention to detail is great. Fast work, great communication at all times and just excellent artworks. I really hope we get to work together again, so it’s safe to say I strongly recommend him for any production that requires artwork. “
— Maja Karlsson, Production Manager at Bond Street Film
THE PROCESS
For this kind project, Nuen’s three-step workflow had been used. A workflow that we have been using for many projects, simple and very effective.
More projects utilized this workflow can be found easily on our INSTAGRAM
On the right are the composition options and below is the final 3D blockout of the first shot, inside the giant mech hangar.
We always use 3D as much as possible to quickly assemble a scene with accurate lighting, straight from the brief, following a quick sketch. It helps nicely with testing multiple compositions for the client to choose from.
Since this project had a really tight timeline (two weeks for 7 images), and we needed to get approval from the main clients (Paradox and Harebrained Schemes), Nuen and Bondstreet decided to finish all the composition options first, get the final chooses from the clients and go straight to detailing the 3D scene. Everything needed to be planned out carefully to avoid mistakes.
For the blockout phase, one of the most important things we always try to nail first is the layout. Especially for this project, since all of the artworks will later be animated and required a lot of layers in the right places, to create the sense of depth with parallax.
The layout will also help strengthen the composition of each shot since each one will only be shown for a few second, we need them to look to the right spot. All the elements need to be put in the right place to draw attention to the focal point.
That’s when the lighting kicked in. Together they created a strong composition.
The polishing and detailing phase was done in good old Photoshop. Where we added lots of small details as well as refined the lighting and overall atmosphere of the scene. Each and every layers had been carefully worked on, in order to keep them clean for the parallax movements. Every mechs were well taken care of.
This was by far the first time we have ever worked with that many mechs in a project!
The team at Harebrained Schemes happily danced when they’ve received the final deliveries, Maja Karlsson told us.
Clients: Paradox Interactive/Harebrained Schemes
Agency: Bond Street Film
Creative director: Johan Hammarberg
Producer: Maja Karlsson
© Paradox Interactive
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Services: Promo Art, Environment Concept Art, Illustration
