Urgot Redesign Concepts
In addition to doing the splash, I actually got to work a little bit during early Urgot production on concepts to help shape the vision for the new 'Got.
In the early phases, David and I toyed with the idea of Urgot as one of the eccentric chem barons of Zaun before we started reigning him in to a more serious prison escapee who hunts down chem barons. I enjoyed doing some of the whackier early explorations but once we honed in on the legs being central to his gameplay, it was Larry Ray's mechanical concepts that brought this project home.
I gotta say it's something of a childhood dream of mine to design an iconic villain. I kept thinking about how fun it must have been for Iain McCaig to jam on Darth Maul, or Ralph McQuarrie on Darth Vader. Anyway, hope players enjoy our new baddie, and that Urgot lives up to his new title of Dreadnought.
These were the first five concepts I did after our initial kickoff. I really liked the idea of Urgot as a mechanized mafia boss. We lovingly dubbed E "the tick"
One of my earliest concepts when I was trying to push Urgot to be more of a sleezy mechanized mafia boss. I liked playing with the idea that his silhouette was utterly inhuman but that he tried to dress like a real person as if it would fool anyone.
rapid-fire bust studies early on looking for the right feeling for Urgot. Some of them were intentionally more goofy to see if Urgot should be more "weird" vs "gross" or "scary"
Round 2. A lot of these concepts I knew went too far but we wanted some concepts to shake up some of our preconceptions about what Urgot was and wasn't
some more "out there" studies in the same veign, seeing if there was something really different that could still feel like Urgot
one of the first bust studies that captured the brutality and intelligence we were going for with Urgot's final direction
Trying out a coat to simplify silhouette
little animation test for Urgot's autos and Q, with the idea that his forearms could rotate between guns and sawblades when he attacks from melee range or goes to execute you. Bit too sci-fi but we ported some of the same feeling to his Battlecast skin
concept piece to test out what would become Urgot's ultimate: the chains into the woodchipper stomach-piece
At one point was toying around with the idea that there was barely anything left of Urgot's original body and that he could suit up into modular pieces depending on if he was going to battle or just goin to the club