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Monday, August 18, 2008

Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 - Minesweeper/Coyote

Next up on the Wolf of the Battlefield front is Coyote. The red bandana wearing Rambo look-alike was never part of the initial character designs I had drawn up. What he was before was an explosives expert/minesweeper. I got a few reference materials on bomb diffusal equipment and sketched up his initial design.




He ended up being one of my more favorite designs from this game. I actually took his arm design from a previous design I did for Backbone (way back when we were still called Digital Eclipse). Since that old design was never used, I was happy to work it back into the minesweeper.

Alas ol' minesweeper didn't have such a happy ending. Midway (pun intended) through the project cycle, Capcom had switched management teams. We had lost our Capcom side producer. The new management wasn't quite happy with a few of our characters. They had wanted to change a few of the designs and sadly, the minesweeper got the ax. In his place, they wanted Rambo:


Apparently, he looked too much like Rambo. I didn't know this but Sly Stallone didn't really like other people using his likeness, even in a parody. I had heard that he had sued other video game companies for having his likeness. So, in an effort not to get the pants sued off of us, upon Capcom's request, I went through a few re-designs of the head.


I had already designed a few UI screens with the minesweeper, and because I really liked his design it was really painful to redraw everything all over again.

Really painful.

I think I was already close to my breaking point at this time, but I still had to push through. I remmeber trying to draw the options screen and I was just having such a difficult time trying to get the drawing to look right. No matter how much time I spent on it, I was simply too tired to get that drawing right. It still looks kinda funny, but it's passable.



So, while I like how the Rambo character turned out, I really do miss the grumpy ol' Minesweeper. Well at least, my blog will be the only time he'll be able to see the light of day. So here's to the old codger! That's all for tonight! Good night and God Bless.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like the Minesweeper dude better too 'pre...as for the "Rambo character", the version with the bandana and biker mustache looks tight!

Biggedy said...

Oh yeah! Haha, those faces were really fun to draw, 80's classic looks! The bandanda guy's got a Hulk Hogan thing goin'. I like my Steven Segal version too, haha!

Alan said...

All the pain behind the scenes.... yet the game still came out friggin awesome!

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