One of the first grey blockouts that the level designer and I collaborated on. We wanted it to feel constrained, but designed purposefully to try to trick the visitor in to thinking it was something bigger, like disneyland (or a knockoff)

Zbrush concept and design for tree shapes that were unique enough to feel offworld, but also work when tiled a bunch. I banked on rotating them a ton and scaling them as much as I could get away with. The team did something much better in the end. :)

Filling in the walkways and general playspace. I loved the idea that this arboretum originally was built from the outside in so I wanted a structure up top to serve as a gantry that they used to construct the dome and bring in the raw materials.

Yep, there used to be an observatory in the arboretum. The Designer and I are still very sad about it, but it had to go to make way for the greenhouse! This shot shows the start of Alex's Falling Water Knockoff office.

Fallingwater was meant really to kind of meld with nature--to surround it and not contain it. I loved the idea of random little nooks and elevated balconies that Alex could work from on a whim for creative energy.

The architecture really started to gel for me here. I blocked out a bunch of the rocks/cliffs here and started thinking about how they got rocks into the space station...did they launch them from earth? were they asteroids? wouldnt those be radioactive

The arboretum when I used to have rain. I wanted the entire thing to feel like the produce aisle of a grocery store complete with timed fake storms to feed the plants.

..but oh in the right lighting, during a quiet moment hiding from Typhon...it could have been romantic. From the inception I wanted the rocks here to be fake--paper mache much like a theme park with maintenance access just inches behind the illusion.

Instead of an observatory, we decided that the arboretum needed a greenhouse structure. I built this one loosely off of a conservatory I saw in England, but it really didn't match with the art-deco styling that was starting to shape up.

I was hoping that based on the time of day, the greenhouse exterior glass would shift in hue to add a nice point of dynamism to the overall level.

The Environment crew really started delivering the goods. This is where I parted ways with the level, and it ended up looking 100000000x better in game thanks to the hard work of the Environment crew.

When I first started at Arkane I was assigned to explore what the exterior would look, and feel like. I personally went through 6 iterations of playable spaces, including cinematic previz illustrating how the station operated. Thankful for the training.

Orignally the station was shaped like a bar of soap. I started trying to vizualize from a player perspective scale, and the challenge of small scale to larger scale detailing.

Ideas for the exterior of the station--this area would be just behind the exterior armor of the station--tons of rapidly moving zero G micro-gravity offices used for maintenance.

When the exterior was still a big flat soap bar I thought up some ways to use up the big....flat....expanse. BIG solar arrays! Arrays that can get infected by alien matter! Go investigate!!

Exterior explorational concept for solar arrays infested with coral. Also: Early coral idea development. Big chunky crystals was kind of a bad Idea, but I really love them anyways.

My favorite version of the station--eerily tight like a submarine but streamline architecture from a bygone era. Lots of human-relatable scale points and Space-age retro stylization

A more industrial take with scalar tiling and shadow pocketing to provide mystery for player scale experience

Ideas for the exterior of the station--this area would be just behind the exterior armor of the station--tons of rapidly moving zero G micro-gravity offices used for maintenance.

Skyscraper up top, industrial plant down below. More early explorations of what eventually became a much much much better gorgeous gold and black tower after I departed.

another old previs I made to illustrate the actual scale of the exterior in a small part of the entire station. Big!!

some initial explorations of the skill recorder chamber. This was during a late 60s sort of phase in production I got a general concept showing gorgeous nearly synthetic wood panelling, cigarette ash trays, and blinking servers and cried tears of love.

Another Era, another timeline, another exploration for station style.

An early concept sketch for recycling to hide what foul things happen inside waste exchange.

Deep Storage Access control/gateway concept

environment tests for the exterior of deep storage. The idea of a tank within a tank was kind of always a cool idea I think.

Initial previs for the flow design in Deep Storage--a server facility in the station. The server area was required to be very cold, so I wanted the administrative area above it to feel like the freezer aisle in a grocery store.

Zbrush concept I made for the hyperchilled looking glass servers in the data repo

more zbrush concepts for the looking glass servers and how to identify what to replace to fix it

Like a giant haunted library, the idea here was to provide huge sliding file walls like in old records offices. Constantly moving providing cover in battle, and a challenge in navigation.

Water treatment previs. Poop in the tank, and a water treatment facility below. Creating a good Scalar balance was so hard, esp with so many things to take in mentally at one time.

Visual concept for life support. The original idea was that this was the oldest part of the station, so I wanted it to feel soviet in nature with a mural painted still on concrete--like a repurposed government facility with still waxy floors.

More playable concept of atmosphere. If it could have coughed, it would have.

Playable concept for Atmosphere/air exchange. I wanted it to feel like the back stage of a massive pipe organ, but really kind of dingy--like the pipe organ had been smoking a pipe for too long.

Waste treatment concept by one of the amazing in house concept agents at arkane. I loved the tank's shape in contrast to the industrial framing.

I was goofing off with an early model of the Typhon from the character team one day lonnng ago, and I decided to play with setting up a greyscale height map along with some material deformation animations to make the smooth creature appear to bulge around

Zbrush Concept for Cargo carriers in the Cargo section of the station.

Old school concept of the first capsules workers would have lived in at the beginning of the station's construction. I thought about construction sites for places like the empire state building--almost rickety in comparison to the final product they make

Previs playable concept I created to depict Transtar engineer sleeping chambers--Slow rotating rotisserie style japanese hotel pods.

More sleeping quarter exploration--this was the first time I showed off my creepy test shader on the Typhon model behind distorted glass. I wanted to scare the Creative Director and Lead Designers. :D

The idea was each bed band(tm) would cycle on a standard hourly rate. If you had a shift that you needed to only do 3 hours every x hours of work, you could lay in knowing you'd be spit out exactly at 3 hour intervals.

The idea was each bed band(tm) would cycle on a standard hourly rate. If you had a shift that you needed to only do 3 hours every x hours of work, you could lay in knowing you'd be spit out exactly at 3 hour intervals.

I thought a strong visual conflict between unbelievably massive computer servers and ice caverns made lots of awesome potential for lighting.

Prototype playable deep storage server space re-shaped. I was still obsessed with endless bitcoin mining server racks cooled by ice. So creepy.

Finding those unique servers also meant developing a shape language that the players could follow in order to unconciously find their destination points. I played a lot of Descent as a young architect, and I was traumatised. You are welcome.

More studies with the frozen ice walls and scalar contrast between organic and structural.

I needed to design these specific servers to stand out amongst the rest of the server boxes in the zero g environment. Since it was free floating, that meant it had to read as important at EVERY possible angle while frantically fighting inside.

I needed to design these specific servers to stand out amongst the rest of the server boxes in the zero g environment. Since it was free floating, that meant it had to read as important at EVERY possible angle while frantically fighting inside.

I needed to design these specific servers to stand out amongst the rest of the server boxes in the zero g environment. Since it was free floating, that meant it had to read as important at EVERY possible angle while frantically fighting inside.

Finding those unique servers also meant developing a shape language that the players could follow in order to unconciously find their destination points. I played a lot of Descent as a young architect, and I was traumatised. You are welcome.

I needed to design these specific servers to stand out amongst the rest of the server boxes in the zero g environment. Since it was free floating, that meant it had to read as important at EVERY possible angle while frantically fighting inside.