I collaborated with other designers to flesh out the backgrounds, motivations and overall context for the various enemy factions in the game.
Hellbugs (pictured) provided us with a versatile enemy kit to use in multiple zones and scenarios.
Each faction was given an illustrative diagram for inter-department use. Some diagrams were even used by the SyFy team working on the television series. The diagrams were also used in the process of making the "Intel" videos for each faction.
Copywriting & Narrative Direction
Aeria Games/Gree/Ubisoft
I researched, organized and directed all narrative tasks for the Assassin's Creed: Memories (unannounced) project.
While maintaining open communication with the license owners at Ubisoft, I drafted up story proposals and script treatments for the various missions, contracts and "Memories" of the game that incorporated original and established characters and events from Assassin's Creed.
I wrote copy for the promotional material and coordinated with the art and marketing teams at Aeria Games to produce an animatic for outsourced production.
Content Organization & Presentation
Trion Worlds
While working with an interdiscplinary scrum team consisting of atrists, programmers and designers, I provided visual diagrams to help convey the content parameters.
In addition to maps and story/mission flow documents, a list of characters and their relationships with each mission and zone was also created.
Team members found the visual aids easy to access and understand throughout the development process.
EGO - The Science Behind The Fiction
Trion Worlds
I helped flesh out and develop the context for the User-Interface and various technologies within Defiance.
The brochure (pictured) was the team's first glimpse of what would later become the EGO system used in Defiance.
Art Meets Design
Red 5 Studios
The IP being developed for Firefall was initially penned by one of the designers and went through several iterations. Being a writer myself, I participated in that creation process. This section illustrates some of the duties I fulfilled during the IP development process.
Since Firefall had three playable factions and a fourth NPC faction, one of the first hurdles the design team encountered came with the factional palette. Though this is heavily influenced by the art department, design needed to produce a set of three highly visible and distinct faction colours used for team identification. The natural step was to use the three primary colours: red, yellow and blue. This didn't fair well with the art department's creative vision and thus various proposals were made that resulted in everything from purple, saffron and cyan to ultimately light blue (Communion), green (Accord) and orange (Chosen). The colours permeated every aspect of the faction. Because the character silhouettes couldn't be too drastically different, the faction colours were added to glowing elements on the Battleframes. Taking a cue from "G.I.Joe", faction colours were even added to all weapon-fire and projectiles. This greatly increased character recognition on the battlefield.
I created visual guides using grey-scale concept art and added the appropriate colouring, thematic details and textual flavor for each faction. These three images helped reinforce the factions and provided a small amount of context for players to familiarize themsleves with when choosing a faction to play.
Creative Writing
Over the course of IP development, I also created a slide show that concisely spelled out the macro view of Firefall's conflict as well as the overall goals and motivations of the four factions. Through short descriptions and details, an epic science-fiction story took shape. Rather than submitting lengthy documents describing the lore, this system of short descriptions allowed for rapid iteration and did not force already busy Creative Directors to read a novel in order to comprehend the story.
The icons below represent the six playable races within the three playable factions along with detailed information about the world and the primary antagonist - a world devouring force referred to as "The Melding."
