Adventures on the High Seas

Sid Meier's Pirates! was amazing for many reasons.  I got involved half way into production after the game had a major redesign courtesy of Sid.  It offered me the chance to model and light sets, experiment with background matte painting, and blurring the line a bit between 2D and 3D.  What could be more fun than doing all that for an ocean adventure game where you're sailing around as a pirate?

Here are some samples of things I did on this project:

This is one of several backgrounds I made for the various information screens.  The ships were already made, but I got to dress up the decks a bit with gold, and  other accoutrement from daily pirate life.  A lot of this would be covered in game information, and some characters tossing big barrels to each other as they unload things from the ships.  The screens were quite alive, and fun to work on.

This is one of the many taverns that you encounter in Pirates!  I did the texture work, modeling of food scraps on foreground tables, and some of the lighting for this scene.  This screen is filled with characters ranging from bar maidens, and potential crew members all way to a mysterious stranger that issues tasks that might benefit your journey through the game.

Here is a matte painting I did for a fight that occurs in many locations in the game.  If victorious, you kick your adversary through the glass window and he falls past the camera.  This background was meant to simply supply some interesting detail that is seen for only a few seconds behind a shower of broken glass and the bouncing body of the defeated pirate.