BENEATH

-THE-

BADLANDS

— Beneath the Badlands

Deadbolt Interactive

— ROLE

Concept Lead & 2D Artist

— TEAM SIZE

60+

— AWARDS & HONORS

Best Sound Design – Entelechy 2023

Beneath the Badlands is a first-person roguelike shooter where players control a bounty hunter descending deep into a cavern full of strange beasts. Along the way, players gain control over the dark magics of the dungeon to expand their abilities, and become more powerful as they head ever deeper towards the source of the corruption.

My Role

Concept Lead

- Track and ensure delivery of concept assets via SCRUM and Kanban

- Organize and lead team meetings & daily stand-ups

- Assist with asset handoff to other departments

- Work with art directors to establish and edit art bible

- Recruit and integrate junior artists for outsourced work

- Critique team work to align with standards set by art bible

Concept & 2D Artist

- Create concept art to define overall look and visual direction for game

- Develop multiple variations for each concept delivered

- Illustrate schematics to serve as in-the-round references for 3D character and prop artists

- Thumbnail and illustrate key promotional visuals

- Illustrate assets for 2D animatic cutscenes

- Conduct research on relevant topics such as but not limited to steam machinery, indigenous Western American cultures, and regional flora

- Ideate and illustrate assets for User Interface and HUD

Character Concept

I was responsible for designing the main character’s companion and final enemy, Sage. She was written to be the headstrong, compassionate-to-a-fault foil to Aster. The visual impression I wanted to give players is that Sage wasn’t quite cut out for bounty hunting, and her main goal was to support Aster in their endeavors. Additionally, her respect of the natural order of the world influenced me to design her with organic, down-to-earth shapes and colors. I worked with the character lead to establish and expound upon multiple designs for Sage until we reached a final design to enter the technical pipeline and be implemented into the game (pictured at the very bottom).

First passes for Sage’s design.

Second passes for Sage’s design.

Additional visual of Sage

Additional visual of Sage and Aster

Final concept for Sage as the final boss

In-game render of Sage

In-game render of Sage

Environment Concept

Early in development, I helped establish general ground rules for the atmosphere of the game world. I created painted visuals like ones in the top row to convey expectations for lighting, scale, and use of color. Later in the pipeline, I illustrated specific visuals to help the environment team navigate challenges such as relationships between lightning and foliage, and set dressing beautiful corners.

Early concept for town outskirts

Early concept art for town main street

Early concept art for lighting inside the caves

Visual guide for foliage art and set dressing

Concept art for facade of steampumk “thingamajig”

Early concept for the tavern that serves as the player hub

User Interface

In the initial stage of development, the game design team wanted a design for a diegetic UI piece, so after a few iterations, we settled on a final design that was processed and implemented by our prop artists (pictured on the far right).

Further into development, I made the case to switch to a sleeker, more minimal style of UI to suit the needs of a player playing a fast-paced roguelike. I designed and assisted the implementation of a UI that used all-white colors to contrast the dark lighting of the caves, but still featured the sketchy, charcoal contour lines that matched the western themes of the game world. The simplified UI became version used in the final build of Beneath the Badlands, showcased in the video below.

First pass of design

Second pass of design

Final render of diegetic asset