Syndicate Wars - Promo Art

1996
These were done in Photoshop 3 and I remember how having layers for the first time in an art app was such a game changer for the studio as we all transitioned away from Deluxe Paint. They were also done with a mouse (mostly via the straight line tool), as none of us had Wacoms back then!

These were all based off my original designs (not that you'd know it, looking at the teeny pixel characters I produced). I got a load of flak for how chunky the sprites were, but I designed the game art for SVGA, it wasn't meant to be VGA originally (and this was back before 3d graphics cards became commonplace). Arguments were had with our project lead over the decision to restrict the zoom level to the maximum range of the currently equipped weapon. This resulted in the characters being zoomed in anyway, even in the later released SVGA version patch. To this day, I still think it was the wrong call (you're supposed to be directing the carnage from an airship!).

Agent
This was a piece that I'd hoped would get used in the packaging/marketing materials, but they went with the big shiny face based around this guy's features instead.

The Players
I came up with this back when we thought we were still going to have all three factions playable (the Syndicate, the Church, and the Bikers).