Leftovers from Springfield

Back in 2006 I worked as a Concept Artist on "The Simpsons Game" for Electronic Arts. I've recently been backing up some files when I came across a few images that I had created for the game. I'm not sure if these even made it into the game. I know for sure that "The Shims" was cut because, as I learned when I moved to The Sims team at EA, they weren't very pleased with the image and didn't give it the go-ahead.

One of my producers on the project had tasked me with creating some images that would appear either at the Game Stop store in Springfield or somewhere in the game later. So I decided to take some of my favorite games as well as some beloved EA Franchises, and "simpsonize" them. Here are a few!

I believe this one was a dual effort of mine and another artist. I basically took his rough sketch and cleaned it up.


I'm a huge Half-Life fan, so I would take any chance to squeeze in a reference to that series. Flavin!


This was my attempt to remind the fine folks at EA that they used to have an awesome football series that didn't include the word "Madden" followed by a number. I'm not a sports guy at all... I avoid sports like the plague, but I LOVED "Mutant League Football" on the Genesis. I would happily take an XBLA reboot of Mutant League Football.


This was an interesting one. I had moved onto Dead Space after wrapping up work on the Simpsons, but the game was still in development for about another year. I had some downtime on Dead Space, and I was lent out to The Simpsons team for about a week. I drew this up for the studio as an homage to what I knew was going to be a great classic game. The problem was that the Simpsons Game was going to be released before Dead Space was even announced. I'm not sure if it made it into the game or not, but they did turn this into a poster that was hung up around the studio for a while.

Dead Space - Kendra

Here's something I never thought i'd ever say... I made one of Maxim's "Hottest Video Game Babes of 2008"!!! Now you might be thinking to yourself "but Joey... you're not a video game babe" and then I'll cry because it's true. But luckily... I can kinda draw, and one of the characters I designed for the Electronic Arts game "Dead Space" was chosen! Kendra Daniels was in good company with Zoey from Left 4 Dead, Sofitia from Soul Calibur, The Lolipop chick from GTAIV, Lara Croft, and my favorite, Chun-Li! See the full list HERE

Here's a short overview of the work that went into creating Kendra. First... I was given a brief description of the character, her traits, role in the game, and a bit about her personality. Then I sat down and cranked out a bunch of ideas in rough sketches. The art director and I would then sift through the pages of sketches, picking out what we liked about certain ideas, shelving the ones that didn't quite work. After a round or two of that process, we had settled on three ideas that felt right for the character

Then once we were happy with a direction for Kendra, i drew out a variety of possible hair styles. I was hoping to go the Ripley route with option I, but in the end, we went with a combination of G and K

Then came the fun part of putting together modeling packets for the character to be modeled in 3D. One is the full model, with the jacket, and then one without. Also, each character had a "gore" pass in case the necromorphs got a little hungry. Texture details were called out for the texture artist to accurately render the different materials on her outfit.



The character of Kendra was brought to life by the lovely actress Tonantzin Carmelo (as well as some very talented riggers and animators). She got a chance to slip into a mocap suit and have her face scanned to become Kendra Daniels! Check out her website, she's awesome!!! Click Here

And here's the final render of Kendra that appears in the game...

The end

All Aboard the USG Ishimura!

It's been a while since i've updated, so i thought i'd post some work that i did a few years back on "Dead Space" for Electronic Arts. I came onto the project in November of 2006, so just a little over 2 years ago. I was hired to design all of the outfits for the employees and inhabitants of the USG Ishimura. As I sci-fi fan, this was an awesome project to work on, the visual style even at this early stage was evidently different than anything EA had done in the past and i knew it would be a great opportunity to do some fun work. Here are a few of the characters i worked on...





All Images property of Electronic Arts © 2008