Corey Dangel has been an Art Director for 15 years. He spent the last four years establishing the visual direction for The Agency, a critically anticipated title for PC and PS3. Prior to SOE, Corey spent nearly a dozen years living the life of an elite art director in the games division of Microsoft. Focused principally on online games, Corey spent his first tour of duty working on several groundbreaking titles including the Internet Gaming Zone, Fighter Ace, and Asherons Call. A two-year hiatus sent Corey to Cavedog/Humongous Entertainment where he helped bring the Total Annihilation franchise to the online world. A return to Microsoft had him working on a variety of PC and Xbox games, most notably Dungeon Siege, Psychonauts, and Mythica. Corey attended Western Washington University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Visual Communication. Outside of work, Corey pretends to be a rock star in his circularly referential band, AgentC. He makes a fine martini, too.
For more info: LinkedIn Profile
MGS – Psychonauts
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
E3 2007 interview with Corey Dangel. 9 minutes.
