Original Character Designs - Hearthound

 Back in 2006, when I was attending Westwood College, I took a couple of classes that had a number of projects that seemed to overlap with each other. So I took this opportunity to develop a game concept that had pieces from those classes.

The game I gave to the game concept was Hearthound. It was a science-fiction western about a bounty hunter with a fractured memory and is looking for the murderer who killed his family. The concept was meant to be a third-person action shooter set in an open world filled with story missions and plenty of bounties. There would be plenty of bosses of and side missions that could yield money and upgrades for the player.

The idea starred Jack Heart, I originally named him Tarrant but changed it. Jack was the son of the town marshal and they were attacked by a mysterious outlaw. The outlaw killed his parents and left the him for dead. He was found by a scientist, Dr. Henry Swanson,  and was saved, but not without losing and arm and an eye. The trauma and blood loss fractured his memory and he lost a lot of information about the events of that night and his past. Now he starts a mission to fill in the holes of his memory. Using enhanced prosthesis he becomes a bounty-hunter to hunt down the criminal that did him wrong with some new help whom he meets on the way. 

His quest takes him across the region. The game takes place in a western themed environment. When I first came up with the concept I was placing it on an alternate reality of Earth. Set during the late 1800s in the US, but with advanced technology available in certain regions developed from technology found from space or something. But later I thought maybe it would be better if it was set way in the future on another planet instead.

The first drawing above made for an adobe illustrator class. We needed to make an original drawing from scratch. I drew him in pencil first, scanned it, then outlined and colored him in Illustrator. The background was made in photoshop. The outlines on the character are washed out because the monitors we used were darker and the default color was a dark gray for the brush stroke. I couldn't tell the color difference on those computers. I lost the original file and can't adjust it. 

The name Tarrant was Welsh, I believe, I researched and found that it meant Thunder. I liked it at the time, but later thought that Jack was simpler and better. One theme I wanted to have was: many outlaws had nicknames in the wild west. Like Billy the Kid, Pistol Pete and the sort. So I wanted to give Jack some nicknames based on his reputation in different areas. Names like Jack of Hearts, Thunderheart, and Hearthound. Hearthound was earned from Jack impaling outlaws in the chest with a metal blade that retracts from his robotic arm.

 

 

The above image is from a game concept class. We were supposed to come up with a game concept, which is where I started piecing the idea together. Towards the end of the class we had to come up with a game case cover. The above image is the cover design I had. The image I turned in had the Xbox 360 cover banner across the top.

 

The next image was from a digital sketching class. I used the class to design Marie Swanson. She is the daughter of Dr. Henry Swanson. She is a song and dance entertainer at the local tavern. Though she is one to seek adventure and opts to help Jack Heart on his quest.

 

 Rev. Ivon Gutenberg is a holy man of the christian faith. The lawlessness of the land has become for him to bear with. He took it upon himself to venture out and stop as many outlaws and wrong-doers as he can. He will sacrifice his soul to damnation to bring a purer frontier by killing those outlaws. Gutenberg uses his cybernetic eyes to give him enhanced vision to get more precise shots with his sniper rifle. He also had specially made priest's robes that can react to electrical charges from his cranial implant to make them blend in with his environment. He gets his nicknames from his sniping prowess and ability to not be seen. One of his names that I didn't think of at the time was "Holy Ghost".

This last piece was somewhat inspired by some concept art from the Assassin's Creed video game. This piece was done on my own and not part of a class. It was fun to work on and it shows an example of how the "Hearthound" got his nickname.