LOTR Creatures
Old Orc (beauty render). This was a sculpt we reapplied to a large number of the final in-game orcs to give us a wider age range in our Nemesis system.

Old Orc (beauty render). This was a sculpt we reapplied to a large number of the final in-game orcs to give us a wider age range in our Nemesis system.

Old Orc (zbrush viewport). Here's a good example of the sculpt w/o pore and micro details added.

Old Orc (zbrush viewport). Here's a good example of the sculpt w/o pore and micro details added.

Orc Barbershop! Designs for hairstyles that could be mixed and matched to create a lot of variety.

Orc Barbershop! Designs for hairstyles that could be mixed and matched to create a lot of variety.

Olog #2 (final in-game). This base look gave the art team another starting point to build from.

Olog #2 (final in-game). This base look gave the art team another starting point to build from.

Head designs experimenting with stretching our stylization level and integrating more of the narrative that Ologs are actually dragon hyrbrids.

Head designs experimenting with stretching our stylization level and integrating more of the narrative that Ologs are actually dragon hyrbrids.

Working on SOW was a chance to jump into one of my favorite franchises, and the predecessor to most sprawling epic fantasies.
To add some age and variety to the Orcs and Ologs in Shadow of War, I created/designed these baseline heads (originals by Matt Radunz).
Staying true to the well-established LOTR art direction, most of the Orcs in our film references are all real-world actors with prosthetics. With these Orc and Olog designs I wanted to tap into an archetypical aesthetic, while creating features that could be stretched to work in a lot of configurations for our customization system. These heads would be used by other artists as a baseline for a lot of our final looks.