Gabriel Garza (aka Robogabo) has spent the last four years drawing
pictures of scabrous aliens, painting lush azure cosmic sunsets, journeying into realms of sci-fi imagination. But his most important job has been to touch-up this fella....
Halo 4 is more than merely a new episode in Master Chief’s story. It’s a new start. And while the super-soldier has always undergone cosmetic dibs and dabs during his Bungie years, 343 Industries understood that the time had come to look again at every inch of his armor suit and see what could be tweaked.
“It's a very organic process,” says Garcia. “We wanted to bring something new, but at the same time, stay true to Halo, all the past elements from other designs. There were no set rules.”
So how did he spruce up John-117? Turns out, it’s a long process of zooming in and out of the character, of rejigging details and seeing how they work within the whole, of collaborations and meetings and U-turns out of dead-ends.“I began with Master Chief’s iconic qualities. The visor, the color, certain shapes in the armor. The little shoulder things he has in the back. Once I had that, I would just do a lot of sketches, 20 or 30 sketches.
“We'd go to a meeting and I'd get feedback from [art director] Kenneth Scott. He’d say, ‘I like this one, I like the feet on this other one...’ I'd combine all that together and do 10 more. Show those sketches. Then they'd pick two out of those and I'd do five more, and so on.
“So after starting with 20, we'd end up with maybe three. Of those three we'd choose one and I'd polish it up, bringing it to a certain level where everyone could understand the different parts of it. How the hands look, the feet, the shoulders. Then I'd take one part at a time, the hand for example, and detail it all the way to the fingertips.”
The prime directive was evolution. “I would say it's a more mature look, but at the same time we're as close we can to past Halos. We had a couple of buzzwords when we were designing the Master Chief. Words like ‘tank’, ‘heavy, ‘tough’. When you think ‘tank’, there are certain colors, types of materials, reflectivity. That helped me to take the Master Chief to another level.”
He believes that character-design should contribute to the telling of the game’s story, which is everyone’s responsibility, including writers, modelers and animators. “Even before we started all this, we were trying to have everybody become a Halo expert. Read all the books, play all the games, just get all the way into the universe. People on the team would say to us, ‘it'd be cool if the Chief could do this or that’. So I would change his shoulder in a certain way so he could do that particular movement.”
Garcia has always aimed himself at designing game characters like Master Chief and aliens like the Prometheans. He began his career knocking out infographics and maps for a newspaper in Mexico, before moving to the U.S and beginning work in video games. When he met with Scott, he jumped at the chance to work on Halo.
So what are his tips for aspiring game artists? He says, “Draw every day. Then you can start to worry about getting together a portfolio. Make sure your portfolio is focused on the kind of things you want to be doing. My portfolio at first would be focused on getting into any game company to do concept art. Once I got there, what's my next goal? To do a game that's science fiction. So I'd do a new portfolio with just science fiction pieces. It takes time. It's not easy. It's just practice and never giving up.”
