Carnán is an original, cinematics-only character for Middle Earth: Shadow of War.
Carnán's face design went through a lot of iterations, this is one of the earlier versions, tapping into more of her connection with nature.
Something I'm especially proud of was the velvet effect we achieved on her moss-covered areas.
Some hair design exploration - how natural or unnatural we wanted to push the qualities of her hair and crown.
A great shot from one of the cinematics. The lighting team did an excellent job bringing a lot of gravity to every scene she was in.
Carnán is a powerful spirit of nature residing in the forests of Mordor. She needed to fit the LOTR brand aesthetic, and be immediately recognizable as a nature spirit without being mistaken for the well-known Ents.
Being a cinematics-only character, we were able to push the game engine as far as possible technically with poly count, texture resolution, material complexity, and displacement maps (to give the bark real depth).
Concept by Wayne Barlowe, then Luca Nemalto, with final design exploration by myself. Art Direction by Phil Straub.
