c.dangel.run

dude, what’s with her hair?

While Majesco delivered Psychonauts to retail it was Microsoft who initially invested in Tim Schafer’s startup venture, DoubleFine. I was involved with the project on the publishing side from the due diligence phase through almost 2 years of production. During that time the routine of evaluating assets and verifying production against a schedule accounted for much of my time. But my most significant contribution to the project was defending Scott Campbell’s and Tim Schafer’s vision. I worked tirelessly to gather as much supporting material as possible to prove the marketability of their highly stylized characters and environments.

I was also involved in focus group testing and, subsequently, the revised character design direction that transformed the initial hero D’Artagnan Alsjeblieft, aka ‘Dart’ , into “Raz”. It was during a focus test in San Francisco that one of the participants uttered, “Dude, what’s with her hair?” that we knew Dart was a difficult read in-game. Clearly, the redesign was an effort shouldered principally by Scott Campbell and the talented artists at DoubleFine. But I was heavilly involved in structuring the revised creative brief, being a strong advocate for a spy-like hero and encouraging the addition of his trademark goggles.



Lastly, I helped out with marketing materials so that the heavily burdened production team could stay focused on the important stuff. I even created a custom CD label for their E3 press kit, just because I cared ;^)


I’m including shots of Raz as well as Dart so you can see the changes. The image at top features Dart in the original “money shot”, a term I co-opted to mean visual prototype, for the project.




release date: 2005

character platformers
on the verge of extinction…

The final publisher for this game was actually Ubisoft, but I worked for about 18 months on Tork, splitting my time between Psychonauts, Mythica, and miscellaneous Studio responsibilities. We signed this title at what turned out to be the beginning of the rapid decline in interest for character based platform adventures. And at the point where the financials no longer made sense for us, Microsoft allowed the developer (Tiwak) to pursue a new publisher. Regardless, I spent a good amount of time on this title and helped it get off the ground.


Aside from traveling back and forth to France my job was to keep production on track, help their art team focus on the right priorities, and assist the marketing team by creating screenshots and gameplay trailers.




release date: 2005

launch titles and new platforms…

NightCaster was an Xbox launch title developed by a studio in Denver, Colorado called VR1. As per the role of Publishing Art Director my job was to make sure they delivered quality artwork on time. Quality and timeliness have an inherent tension and because the launch window of the Xbox platform was an immovable target we had to pick our areas of focus very selectively.



The pressure to exploit the “power of the Xbox” was intense and as a result I found myself scrutinizing every asset in the game. In terms of time, my principal contribution to this project was pushing for bold, dynamic spell effects. I think we achieved good results there. In terms of quality, my most important achievement was pushing for a more interesting & iconic hero character. Working closely with Steven Morrison (Art Lead) and Ray Lederer (Sr. Artist) I gave Arran a complete make-over from head to toe. (see before and after images to the left)





Release Date: Dec. 2001

art direction on cruise control…

In isolation, the art direction tasks on Dungeon Siege were fairly light but given the number of tasks to juggle there was always plenty to do. In publishing you are typically covering multiple projects at the same time and I was reviewing artwork every day for Dungeon Siege, Asheron’s Call 2, Nightcaster, Psychonauts, Symphony of Light, the Raven and Rex project, and performing due diligence visits to multiple studios around the world. As our studio’s portfolio grew I eventually got to hire two assistant Art Directors, but I digress.



My main contribution to Dugeon Siege involved reviewing assets against the schedule to verify they were making progress while keeping the quality bar high. But I also provided specific critiques of the main characters (Farm Boy and Farm Girl) to Chris Taylor, reviewed marketing assets with MS marketing on a quarterly basis, gathered screenshots for ad construction on demand, brainstormed with their UI artist (John Gronquist) to bring more “life” to the interface, worked on their game map, and built an entire font based on the original Dungeon Siege logo-type. I even went so far as to create a .TTF for the display face.





release date: 2002

a Before and After story…

One of the first projects I received upon my return to Microsoft was working with an external team to develop a game and build IP around what was originally an Xbox tech demo called “Two to Tango”. It featured a very butch girl named Raven and her pet robot, Rex.

Pipeworks, the developer, did a fine job of translating Rex into real-time friendly polygons but Raven still needed a make-over. The plan at the time was to make Raven a spokesmodel for Xbox so the tomboy-girl-next-door with a machine pistol wasn’t going to cut it.

We contracted Blur Studios to re-envision Raven into a cute but capable action heroine. We worked with four different concept artists on a variety of stylistic approaches and after several revisions ended up with a nice result. We maintained several of the original identifying marks but updated her look to play better for our intended audience. Unfortunately, the game never really got off the ground and the project got mothballed. So it goes.




Project Date: early 2001