GB Feature: Fallout: New Vegas Art Interview

Curious to learn more about the aesthetic utilized in Fallout: New Vegas, we tracked down lead concept artist Brian Menze and art director Joe Sanabria for a three-page Q&A that sheds some light on the additions they’ve made to the storied franchise’s art style.

GB: New Vegas seems to come across a bit brighter than Fallout 3, thanks to such elements as the lights on The Strip and the lighter color of the sky. From an art design standpoint, why did you feel it was necessary to introduce some additional color to the post-nuclear world?

Brian: Some of us, myself included, have worked on previous Fallout titles and have always wanted to introduce a bit more color to the world of Fallout. As an artist, brown sometimes gets very challenging to use over and over again without getting really repetitive, so the artists were thankful that we had an opportunity to add some color to FNV. Though, we tried to keep those splashes of color where it looked natural, as we didn’t want to make Fallout into something else. Fallout has a very distinct look and we, of course, wanted to maintain that.

Joe: I work with the project director, associate producers, level designers, programmers and on occasion the sound designers on a daily bases.

To bring an idea from a concept to in-game, can range from simple to pretty complicated. A complex concept like say the Strip, will require a team to coordinate on a bunch of tasks, over a few months.

To keep it manageable we break up the work into a series of small goals. In the case with the Strip, at first we just focus on the scale of the structures and the layout, afterwards we then focus on getting the textures and materials dialed in, and then work on setting up the lights and adding AI and scripted events etc. During which we are making optimizations to the art and design to make sure it’s running without any issues.