Gauntlet Fan Art Project

GAUNTLET was a childhood favorite of mine, a 4-player co-op dungeon crawler with a Dungeons & Dragons theme that really left an impression on me. For the past few years, in an effort to reconnect with some of the things that inspired me in my youth, I revisited some of the games I’d obsessed over and decided I could do a tribute to them and get some practice learning more Blender and After Effects tools while I was at it.

Group shot of my Gauntlet crew!

In typical “me” fashion, I couldn’t simply just replicate the standard Warrior/Wizard/Valkyrie/Elf thing. I mean, I could, but as much as I love the game, those designs were pretty basic, and I saw an opportunity to have a bit more of a unique vision for this project. What if it were set during the time the game came out, like the mid-80s? And what if it were set in a place full of interesting, colorful characters where I’d spent a lot of my summers growing up? The Venice Beach Boardwalk came to mind. I dreamt up a fictitious tunnel system underneath the beach, filled with all kinds of crazies and what have you. I also decided to just redo all the characters using some of the real-life character archetypes we’d see out at the beaches in SoCal. I mean, let’s be honest, there’s a million dungeon crawler games with the standard character classes and the designs that come with them. Let’s have a little fun!

My version of The Warrior: A muscle-head bodybuilder you’d find at Muscle Beach
My vision for the Valkyrie: a badass roller skate girl who’s not to be trifled with!
I see the Wizard as an old homeless man who has visions. He wards off the evil spirits using his trusty cane/scepter
A little prankster skateboard kid with dual water guns filled with mystery juice is my version of The Elf!

Had to test out a few bad guys as well. The Grunt and The Ghost were pretty common enemies in the game, as were a few others I hadn’t yet gotten around to. Going off the pixel art alone, it was a lot of fun to fill in the gaps in my imagination, just like I did as a kid. My version: a gang of psych ward escapees in their socks and underwear, looking to wreak havoc on anyone who wanders onto their turf. I’m happy with how they turned out!

The original sprites as seen in the arcade game

The ghosts are on the simpler side; I admit, I didn’t really push it too hard, although in the back of my head I wondered how funny it would be if they were made of garbage bags.

All-in-all, I think the project was a success for me on a personal level. I followed a much different process than I usually employ, with early concepting and sketching, really focusing on how shape language and how to envision everything as clearly as I can before committing to the 3D portion. I go into a lot of detail on this in my blog!

Weapons

Before this project, I didn’t do a ton of weapons design, so it was fun to test out those skills and see where it took me. I wanted each character to have something that fit their character class and served their theme while being interesting and not too “typical.”

I went through a few iterations of the Warrior’s weapon, including a battle axe crafted from a broken weight plate. I settled for a hammer, since his name is THOR, after all. Note the lightning bolt!
In the arcade game, the Valkyrie had a sword and shield. For my version, I wanted to go with something that fit the beach boardwalk theme more, so something like a frisbee would make sense. I settled on a bladed disc, with a bit of “sunshine” to help elevate the design a bit.
This one was a lot of fun. I wanted something a crazy old homeless man may carry, like a walking stick or cane. The rest are details that would tell some story about him, as you often see homeless people who are just covered in stories in the form of objects, collectibles, precious little trinkets they’ve collected. The scroll here is actually his prescription for his medication, and the feather was from his favorite pigeon who passed away.
With the Elf, it was pretty straightforward: a water pistol in the style of the typical ones you’d find back in those days. I experimented with making the plastic more translucent, but it looked too weird!
Very happy with how this one turned out. It’s just a simple rusty pipe, but this was the first time I really achieved some procedural material designs I was actually proud of!

This graphic I made for The Elf’s t-shirt had me dig deep into the recesses of my psyche to tap into that youthful/angry energy I was feeling back in those days Gauntlet had graced our arcades.

This style lives inside of me, and just takes the right project to locate and extract it. If you want to see how I felt as a 13-14 year old, you’re looking at it right here

Be sure to check out my blog for more behind-the-scenes looks at some of the sketches and concept drawings!