XCOM 2: War of the Chosen

I had the pleasure of Art Directing the outstanding art team at Firaxis Games on XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. Having been the franchise character lead since the inception of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, it was exciting to reimagine some of the original biomes and themes. This experience was a real pleasure and a highlight of my career. Please see the captions on the images and videos for details and image credits.

I did a quick material and lighting pass on a WIP model of the Chosen Assassin! Models by Matt Kean, Aaron Yamada-Hanff, and Alan Denham.

I lit and rendered the four Chosen tiers for our marketing team.

I created the Chosen Comm Link vignettes with character assets, mixed some animations in matinee, lit, and rendered.

I lit and rendered these Resistance Heroes for our marketing team. Huge props to the amazing Stephanie Iannone. She did an amazing job as the Lead Character Artist on this project and took the hero customization system to the next level.

I created the Faction Comm Link vignettes with character assets, mixed some animations in matinee, lit, and rendered.

I lit and rendered these Lost for our marketing team. Lost models and materials by Alan Denham.

I painted over the fog pod model by Andrew Griffin to give an idea of what the effects from the fog pod might look like 20 years later.

After working with the concept team on the initial crash-site moods, I kitbashed and lit existing environment assets while Steve Jameson absolutely crushed these VFX assets that really sell the Fog Pod vignettes. This vignette was made to help illustrate

Biome leads: Toby Franklin (art) / Brian Hess (level design) / Steve Jameson (FX)

Biome leads: Justin Rodriguez (art) / Matt D’Arcangelo (design)

Biome leads: Neal Jany (art) / Brian Hess (design)

Biome leads: Morgan Hill (art) / Brian Hess (design) / Zeljko Straklj (tech art)

Chosen Stronghold Screen First Pass by Andrew Griffin

Chosen Stronghold Screen Paintover

Chosen Stronghold Shell Screen Final

Abandoned City first pass by Andrew Grfiffin

Abandoned City paintover

Stronghold Sarcophagus first pass by Andrew Griffin

Stronghold Sarcophagus paintover

Subway first pass by Andrew Griffin

Subway paintover

These are example pages from our living art wiki which we used as an infohub and dev-blog for the team. This was primarily maintained by our Art Manager Brian Theodore and me.

And last, but not least, I had the great pleasure of making the cover art for this fantastic Dr. Vahlen remix from the Firaxis Audio Team.