Dark Horse Comics: In The Art of the Mass Effect Universe there are several versions of many of the alien races in Mass Effect. What was the process for coming up with the final look of a particular race?
Derek Watts: Usually we tried to approach each race the same way. Before we got started with the concept phase we would ask writing for a short paragraph describing who this race was. What is their background? Give us some specifics about what they want to see in this race, without getting into too much detail. We just want a bit of direction before we get started. Once we have that short paragraph we usually give it to the concept artists. And at this point we call it phase one. We give the concept artist a lot of freedom to try and explore different ideas. Really try to get to know what this alien is about. They’re kind of unsure and we’re unsure about what we want this thing to look like. Once we get a few concepts for phase one, we try to hone in on a few ideas. We might take two or three ideas to phase two or maybe even just one. And we’ll start to work through the phases. Phase two, phase three, phase four. Keep honing in on the final design. Defining it. What is the visual language for their clothing? What’s the shape of their face? What’s iconic? Is this going to work with our conversation system? Are these characters going to be able to show emotion? Are people going to get attached to them? And these are all things you think of as you go through the phases. Some happen in only a few phases, two or three. Other ones, Thane for example, we went up to phase eight or nine. He took a long time. We even went back on a few ideas, changed a bit, ended up going with ones that were later on. Once we get the concept done, then we start to build the model. And that’s a lot of iterations also, especially with some of the main characters and races. There’s a lot of back and forth. Doing a concept is a piece of art itself, but also building a character is a piece of art. It takes an incredible amount of talent to take something that’s 2-D and turn it into a 3-D character—there’s a lot of things that work on paper that don’t quite come across in a 3-D model. So there’s a lot of refining of the high-poly models. Once we get that done, we texture them up, bring them into the game—we get animators early on and make sure everything works correctly.
Dark Horse Comics: You stated in your intro that you kept a lot of Artists and Architects in mind when conceptualizing the universe. Where did the inspiration for the vehicles predominantly come from?
DW: For the vehicles, we referenced a lot of Syd Mead designs. He did a lot of futuristic cars; he even did heavy vehicles—he did one for Aliens. He also did some concepts for vehicles for Mars and moons, probably for NASA. He did a lot of industrial vehicles in his earlier books. So we had a lot of reference for this. The problem was if you tried to draw something to look like Syd Mead, it looked like a really bad version of Syd Mead. So we just kept some of his visual cues, the way he does his line work, his panels. We kept the vehicle design as simple as possible. And we had to branch away and do our own thing. We referenced a lot of car sites. They usually have what the Mercedes will look like in the future. They have concept teams that visualize these futuristic cars. We referenced a lot of those. We referenced military vehicles for some of the details, like grab bars, and how the straps would work and other kinds of plating they would put on the heavier vehicles. For the Mako itself, a lot of the vehicles in the game were early versions of the Mako. The Krogan truck, the Alliance and Cerberus vehicles—these were all early versions of the Mako that didn’t work out, for one reason or another. For example, the Krogan vehicle was too big. When we were driving around the level in the first Mass Effect it was so hard to see the enemies or even try to shoot them. So we put that one aside. The Alliance vehicle, we tried that. People thought it felt too much like a pickup truck. We put that one aside. Eventually we went with a six-wheeled vehicle that was more reminiscent of an armored personnel carrier. And that one became the final design for the Mako.
Dark Horse Comics: Was there ever a sticking points/disagreements in terms of what concept should have made it the final product?
DW: The disagreement happens fairly early on, usually in the early phases. We might want to take it in one direction; somebody else might want to take in the other. We usually agree on the final concepts. I can’t think of too many designs that there was a heavy disagreement about. We get a lot of feedback from people, from programmers, from design, from writing. We want to make sure people get a chance to see this before they get into the game. We don’t want them to feel like this was rammed down their throat. Some of the designs I wish could have carried on more in the game was the Mako. I thought it was a great design for a vehicle. But you really only see it in Mass Effect. We tried to do a flying version in Mass Effect 2. I’m not sure how successful that was.
Dark Horse Comics: You also state in the Intro that Science Fiction fans see other properties and now compare it to Mass Effect, because it resonates so deeply. The art all seems so unified for such a large universe. Were there controls in bringing all the various designs together to be so dynamic and yet so tightly connected?
DW: For us, I think the reason it gelled so well over the series is because the core leads stayed on Mass Effect for the entire project. Casey Hudson was our executive producer for the entire trilogy. He was the person that carried the vision. We were the ones, as art directors, who would produce the work to meet those visual requirements. We had a lot of the same concept artists throughout the game. Matt Rhodes worked on all three games. He was the one who designed the visual style for the characters. The vehicles and some of the aircraft were done by me and some of the other concept artists. But we really had a strong idea about what we wanted. We wanted a clean science-fiction look. Stuff had purpose. It wasn’t cluttered or junky. We could always reference a few artists that we looked at. We had architects that we also looked at. And I think that really helped people understand what the IP was about. So we kept that consistent throughout the trilogy. What we did do was continue to polish and refine the shapes. Garrus for example: If you see 1, 2, and 3, he looks pretty similar. Most people won’t notice too many changes. But if you actually saw him side by side you’d see the amount of detail we’ve added to him. The texture work and the cloth and how we refined the metal and kept polishing and adding detail to his body and his head. But the iconic things about Garrus remain the same. He’s blue, black, and silver and he always has that visor on. And that visor has changed in all three games.
Dark Horse Comics: What was your personal favorite bit of conceptual art for Mass Effect?
DW: That’s hard to say. There’s so many great pieces done by the artists, the final levels, the characters. It looks phenomenal. It keeps blowing me away every time I look at it. The amount of attention and love these guys put into the project is phenomenal. They go far and above anything you could ever ask for. And to really call out one is difficult, because every time I go in that room and look at stuff people have done, it’s like, man, that looks amazing. I do like the Normandy. I love a lot of the environments. The characters are great. The artists always blow me away. I can’t really think of anything that’s far and above my favorite. I love the entire IP and I think it turned out really well.
Dark Horse Comics: What's been the most rewarding part of working on the Mass Effect epic?
DW: For me the most rewarding part is being on the project right from the beginning to the end. You know you try to come up with a look for the IP and you’re getting a lot of criticism or people are unsure. They compare it to other games. You’re like, “That looks like this game or that reminds me of this movie, how are we ever going to stand out?” You know you’re going to have something. It takes time. You need to stake your claim on a hill and say, “We’re coming out and this is what it’s going to look like.” And just the amount of work that went into that and building up the universe. And now the most rewarding thing is when people see it they tell us other games and other movies that remind them of Mass Effect. We’ve become our style. People know what it looks like. And people can work with that style. It’s always rewarding to see other people working with the IP. The comic books. Some of the other games that are happening and seeing how they’re taking our license. We’ve given them a strong vision and they’re able to take it and even stylize it if they want to and it still looks like Mass Effect.
Dark Horse Comics: What Science Fiction Writers, Movies, Art has influenced you the most in your work?
DW: For Mass Effect, the artist that influenced us the most is Syd Mead, the guy we bring up over and over again. We have looked at other artists. We’ve looked at Star Wars, Doug Chang, Ralph McQuarrie, Joe Johnson. Some of the other concept artists that are out there. A lot of fine artists. A lot of architects. Santiago Calatrava, he’s a Spanish architect. Phenomenal architecture. You can see a lot of his stuff in video games and movies. Just beautiful shapes. We referenced a lot of contemporary architecture just for how clean it is and some of the shapes and designs. How they blend architecture in with nature. How they blur that line. Movies, tremendous amount of movies we referenced. The great thing about movies is they are building it in real life, they’re lighting it, and it gives a lot of information about materials, how lighting works, detail, and so on. We reference movies so often. It gives you so much more detail than what an artist could do. Solaris, Mission to Mars, Final Fantasy the movie, of course the Star Wars movies. So many. We have a giant folder we continually look through over and over again. There’s always more that we’re looking for.
DHC: If you had a superpower, what would it be?
DW: I thought about that one for a while. I asked my wife and she said it wasn’t a superpower. The next one of course would be being able to fly. Who wouldn’t want to fly? It would have to be faster than a robin though. Something as fast as a jet. But when you’re going as fast as a jet, it’s probably going to suck somehow, because you don’t know what you’re going to hit. It’s one of those things that you think would be good, but when you start doing it, maybe it isn’t as cool. But it would definitely save me a lot of money in travel though. I just have to figure out how to get my kids and wife to fly; that would be the hard part. I don’t know if they could all sit on my back.