God Of War "The Dead Stone Mason"

The Mill Chicago was approached to help in promoting their newest addition to the God of War game franchise. This was the second project, out of a handful for The Mill, and it used the in game element of the triptych.

This device is dominantly used for storytelling, helping players understand back story and context for each scene. The character we then focused on for this particular piece was The Dead Stone Mason, one of the most epic enemies of the game.

The brief was brief. We received a single page PDF, with a single image, and three paragraphs of type. The rest was up to us to decide. If you've been in situations like this, it can be extremely liberating, but also create a lot of pressure.

We were given only 5 weeks, including any pre production, to produce 2 minutes of animation, with a budget that allowed for at max a 5 man team. Given that kind of break neck pacing, we had to decide up front what kind of concessions needed to be made to deliver on time, but still produce a polished end product. The largest concession for us was that the camera would do most of the work. We could pull off some smaller secondary character animation, but to finish on time, we had to be limited.

We seriously lucked out with an amazing team on this one. I couldn't be happier and more proud with the level of texturing, lighting, the cel animated pieces in the backgrounds, everything came together on this one.