The change from Bull To Vaas

This is the standard procedure that Leblac undermines when creating his characters. Here’s a brief analyses, of creating a personality by an artist who’s been in the gaming industry for years, and is still making newer game characters up till this day

In this example, Bruno Gauthier Leblac a concept artist who works with Ubisoft, was asked to create one of the main antagonist characters for the game Far Cry 3, he is one of the most prominent character's from the Franchise. The antagonist was originally called Bull, he was meant to be a brutish, broad and intimidating character. The character’s face along was intimidating, he showed he means business, and would ultimately do it too. 

Leblac gave Bull huge defined muscles, scars, piercings to outline this character’s personality, resulting to creating a brute. Leblac thought this was too generic, and he changed the concept for Bull, he did a great job dealing with this and he managed to create one of the most interesting character's of the decade, even if the character's the definition of 'insanity' as Vaas's character's lines go. Leblac came up with different styles.



Pirate styles to be fit the game, more likely because the protagonist is stranded in a deserted island, with different types of psychopaths. The development of Bull changed to another character completely.  He used referenced work, terrorists influenced by pirates, to create this character.  Lablec started to give the character a more insane look and feel . Something to do with pyromancy, the character is demented and loves explosives.

Leblac then creates the character appearance based on actors such as Micheal mando, the looks are very close to Mando it is a bit uncanny. Ubisoft is using actors to inspire their characters, in more recent productions. The name Vaas was used to the character, as it is an indirect way of the word meaning Pyro.


  They start removing some more subtle clues to the character, for example removing burns, and giving him dark hair rather than red, this again to remove that generic feeling, or removing the cliche of the generic style Pyro. The 'sanity' of the character is captured by his hair, the bandages on his fingers, scratches, bruises, injuries along his body. The three white straps which are hanging loosely across Vaas’s chest are an indirect reference to the three white stripes worn by military generals, this is an interesting concept idea, it was difficult to notice, or even decipher this, because these little details build the characters. This shows little details such as equipment creates the most interesting parts of the characters.  Lablec says, he finishes a character and the more bizarre yet interesting thing is he feels the character is ready, and he did a good job of that character is if he feels the character is staring back at him.

Reference:

Ian Dean, Initials., Issue 89., December 2012. ImagineFX  Create dynamic game art.. 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, BA1 2BW, UK: Future Publishing accessed: http://www.imaginefx.com/02287754332397685045/imaginefx-89.html