Tuesday, December 02, 2008

A long long time ago.. Final Fantasy IX



























I found these old stuff while I was cleaning my hard drive. These were done in Hawaii when I was working on Final Fantasy IX in 1999. I was originally hired as a concept artist doing lots of environment concepts then towards the end of the production, myself and Christian Schuerer and Bela Broszek had to touch up about 200 something 3D rendering plates in Photoshop.

It's not exactly same as Matte-painting we know nowadays but back then-when we were using SGI-Alias software to do these hi-res background: dirt, snow, crack, flags, even torch lighting took too much time to realize in 3D-so we faked them in photoshop. Even though this game was made for Playstation console, these BG end up looking better than most of PS2 games because the game wasn't played in real-time. Final Fantasy VII, VIII were done in the same fashion. I thought this is such an old history and how things were done were quiet different back then, at least 3D artist had no limitation on geometry size or texture size because it would be baked and rendered as 2D template when it's done.

... I miss working in Hawaii.


Cecil

14 comments:

Matthew Scheuerman said...

These are awesome and I almost wish more games were done like this. The textured polygons and complex shaders can't match the painted perfection that you and Christian can provide to a scene.

Thanks for the history lesson. Is Square in Oahu? And did all the concept artists including Craig Mullins live there too?

After going to Kauai and the big island I wish I could find a way to work in Hawaii too.

Thomas Yamaoka said...

These are awesome!!! Nice Cecil. I cried when Square left the island.

Frasier Olivier said...

great, very nice work.

Unknown said...

Matt,

Square was in Honolulu Ohau we had a phat office looking down aloha marina. We used to walk down to chinatown for lunch and stuff.
Craig Mullins worked remotely from LA for movie "Spirit Within". That was mostly Japanese artists on the team other than 20 something US Artists worked on the game.

Matthew Scheuerman said...

"Craig Mullins worked remotely from LA for movie "Spirit Within"."

Ha ha how ironic. He supposedly works remotely from Mauai now.

Daniel Ljunggren said...

thanks for showing these! Been a big fan of FF a long time, where FFIX was definately one of the best imo. I love the drawings too.

Jackson Sze said...

Hey Cecil.. these are awesome! FFIX is one of my all time favorites!

Do you know Chris Voy? He worked on this project too, now he's working on the same project as I am...

Unknown said...

Dude Cecil these are awesome. FFIX is definently one of my favorites, I used to love the backgrounds. It would be cool to make another game like this. Thanks for posting these!

Jeffrey Lai said...

O i just found your blog!
and what a surprise that was.
you have amazing work
I loved the background designs of ffIX
wonderfully lit too.

Unknown said...

That's Craaazy awesome!

Anonymous said...

This is my favorite game so im very happy i found your desings here! :) ^^
I wish i could work for any Final Fantasy game :'(

Tom Scholes said...

Oh man I didn't know you did these. These make me so happy to see again :D

Tom Scholes said...

Oooooooooooooh, you don't have any of your work on Parasite Eve do you? One of my favorite games out there.

Nirvan Shuja said...

What i love about the pre-rendered BG's is every new door or alley was like a different shot, nothing was too linear.