Tonight was the opening night of Ghosts in the Machine, an exhibit of Concept Art from Bungie hosted at the [url=http://www.ltdartgallery.com/]LTD Art Gallery[/url] in Seattle. I came south from Western Washington University for the night to attend the Artist Reception and meet the Bungie Artists who created the 33 pieces of Concept Art on display. Some of the artwork were pieces we've seen before on Bungie.net, some of the Concept Art wasn't even from Destiny and represented personal projects or potential forrays into games that could be. But at least 18 of those pieces were new and never before seen artwork, including a first look at a new enemy race or creature, the Asaru.
I spent at least an hour slowly traversing the gallery, notebook and pen in hand, taking a total of seven pages of notes on what I saw and some of the more interesting pieces I heard. I'm certain that pictures of each of these concepts will find their way on the internet in due time (I believe I heard that the gallery would be posting a ton of pictures to their facebook by the weekend), but there are details there that cameras cannot capture, and that's where I come in.
I'd like to take a moment to thank Jesse Van Dijk, Darren Bacon, Joe Cross, Isaac Hannaford, Adrian Majkrzak, Jaime Jones, Ryan Demita, Frank Capezzuto, Kekai Kotaki, Dorje Bellbrook, and all the other artists at Bungie who came to the event or contributed artwork. You guys are awesome, and I have so much respect for your abillity to create a vision for the entire team at Bungie. The folks at the LTD Gallery are also awesome for helping to host this event. Thanks also goes out to my Family who had to pull a lot of strings to help get me to the event, and to the community members who thought to bring really nice cameras to take pictures with, any images of yours that I use I will credit at the bottom of the [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post?id=62370976&path=1]final post[/url].
I've updated the thread with descriptions of the 33 pieces of artwork, and I will link the pictures to the descriptions as they become availible on the internet. This will take me some time, so I ask for your patience while I update the thread. I hope you enjoy my descriptions as much as I enjoyed the event, and if you have questions feel free to ask! I'll try to do my best to fill you in.
If you live in the Seattle area, the exhibit will be open till November 3rd, and if you are a fan of Bungie and Destiny you definitely won't want to miss this!
[quote][b][u][url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post?id=62370976&path=1]CLICK HERE AND START FROM THE TOP TO SEE ALL 33 DESCRIPTIONS![/url][/b][/u][/quote][quote][url=http://destiny.bungie.org/forum/index.php?id=16840]Overview Pictures of the many Bungie Artists and people attending the event by Beorn from Destiny.Bungie.Org![/url][/quote][quote][url=http://www.ltdartgallery.com/category/current-exhibition?page=2][b]UPDATE: PICTURES ARE UP ON THE LTD WEBSITE![/b][/url][/quote]
[quote][url=http://images.cdn.bigcartel.com/bigcartel/product_images/126484161/max_h-1000+max_w-1000/DESTINY_Bridge_of_Bone_Ghosts_in_the_Machine_Darren_Bacon.jpg]1) Destiny: Bridge of Bone by Darren Bacon[/url][/quote]
This was an ink concept of a skeletalized metal bridge spanning across a chasm in an indistinct setting. Seemed like more of a piece that was trying to nail down the architectural style of a particular area. Lots of exposed beams and worn down plates and steps, it looked great.
[quote][url=https://d3v1qqxkrxwllf.cloudfront.net/00652dca24440304c3560a47dcbe96cb/9570f21791dd5109f71fd23e0a95ee4c/1024T]2) After the Breaking of the World by Jesse Van Dijk[/url][/quote]
This was my most favorite non-Destiny piece of the exhibit (All Destiny Pieces begin with "Destiny:"). Apparently from what I understand, this was a personal project of Jesse's that was created in some very special fashion (like it was printing onto glass or something, I'm not entirely sure).
This extra wide piece of artwork showed a medieval society trying to rebuild after a global calamity. The settlement was comprised of two multi-tiered round castles, sorta stacked like cakes, with the better houses at the higher levels going down to more commoner style houses near the base. The aforemention calamity must have been some sort of monster earthquake, because the earth had split across the entire countryside, creating a massive chasm that split part of one of the cities into two pieces. Work had begun to construct a stonebridge across the chasm to the neighboring city stack, with plenty of detail being put into the framework, cranes, and workers constructing this arched bridge. Down in the slums, lines had been strung across the chasm to provide transportation and access to the slums. It's not Destiny, but you could write an entire story around this one bit of artwork of a world trying to rebuild and collect themselves after this event, it was so freaking good and I hope someone got an amazing shot of it so I can use it as wallpaper.
[quote][url=http://static01.bungie.net/pubassets/615/pike_desktop.jpg?cv=3983590686&av=1129280554]3) Destiny: Pike by Joe Cross[/url][/quote]
This is the pike picture we've seen since the reveal of Destiny on Bungie.net. I chose not to focus my notes too heavily on concept art we have readily availible, not because it isn't good, but because there was so much more to be seen that we don't have readily availible.
[quote][url=https://d3v1qqxkrxwllf.cloudfront.net/00652dca24440304c3560a47dcbe96cb/2f18358413e815576c79bf09f85d4fb9/1024T]4) Destiny: Reinforcements Arrive by Isaac Hannaford[/url][/quote]
This was concept art of the human ship from the E3 Demo that the Hunter arrived in. It was fully decked out in the Forces of the City logo and symbols, and it had jump jet engines and seemed like it was lightly armed. It's coloration was a mixture of blacks, whites, and oranges.
[quote][url=https://d3v1qqxkrxwllf.cloudfront.net/00652dca24440304c3560a47dcbe96cb/2f06d58d37a09ff116a78527fa494bd9/1024T]5) Destiny: Flight by Isaac Hannaford[/url][/quote]
This was another concept for a space ship in orbit above the planet. The sharp angles and the jet-blackness of the ship reminded me of a B2 Bomber, but the sihouette is very different, much more like a T. I looked for faction symbols like Dead Orbit to see if I could figure out who had manufactured it, but those details weren't present.
[quote][url=http://images.cdn.bigcartel.com/bigcartel/product_images/126488808/max_h-1000+max_w-1000/DESTINY_Storm_Breaker_Ghosts_in_the_Machine_Adrian_Majkrzak.jpg]6) Stormbreaker by Adrian Majkrzak[/url][/quote]
This is another not-Destiny piece, and it features a bunch of orange suited construction workers with white masked helmets working on some sort of ocean-side dock. Waves crashed against the edge of the bronze platform as workers welded a simillarly colored crane and others were moving around on the dock. A bulky and blocky mech, also of the same color, stood in the lapping surf.
[quote][url=http://static01.bungie.net/pubassets/725/captain_desktop.jpg?cv=3983590686&av=1129280554]7) Destiny: Winterthrone by Jaime Jones[/url][/quote]
This is the concept art of the Captain holding a sphere that's been up on Bungie.net since the second mailsack or so after Destiny was revealed. It was displayed under a different name than it had on the website though.
[quote][url=https://d3v1qqxkrxwllf.cloudfront.net/00652dca24440304c3560a47dcbe96cb/85adbe1d92bda17687e47ecc0f1e8c94/1024T]8) Destiny: Cadet by Ryan Demita[/url][/quote]
This was concept art of a female hunter mid-stride, shes wering a bright red cloak and wielding a bright red gun. It made me think of new monarchy, but the trapezoid symbols on the cloak and the disjointed squares on the guns were definitely not new monarchy symbols, perhaps this is a very early piece of concept art?
[quote][url=http://images.cdn.bigcartel.com/bigcartel/product_images/126488631/max_h-1000+max_w-1000/DESTINY_The_Wall_Ghosts_in_the_Machine_Jesse_Van_Dijk.jpg]9) Destiny: The Wall by Jesse Van Dijk[/url][/quote]
This is Concept Art of the interior of the Wall in Old Russia, seen in the E3 Demo. Unlike many other gaming studios, these sort of structures were fleshed out in 3d by the concept artist team and painted over by the concept art team (as opposed to the Last of Us, where the level design team would make the 3d model), or so Isaac Hannaford was trying to explain to me. It was interesting to compare this look at the wall to what we saw in the E3 demo, this one was much closer to the "ground" and had some pretty interesting rust on the railing and beams. One of the red diagonal cross beams read "Nordenstahl", not sure if we saw that in the E3 Demo.
[quote][url=http://i.imgur.com/s9lBpqB.png]10) Destiny: Exotic Cloaks by Joe Cross[/url][/quote]
This is concept art we saw from the GDC presentation by Joe Staten and Chris Barett, detailing designs for some really cool gear hunters might find.
[quote][url=http://images.cdn.bigcartel.com/bigcartel/product_images/126483516/max_h-1000+max_w-1000/Untitled_Ghosts_in_the_Machine_Ryan_DeMita_1.jpg]11) Untitled by Ryan Demita[/url][/quote]
This was a pretty odd piece. Three non-Destiny characters were concepted out. The first was a female with an oversized white helmet, cradling a ball of magic she was forming between her hands. The middle figure was the most interesting, it was a tall man in black robes that glittered with some sort of mysterious golden shimmer, he had a long green visor covering his face and his arms were bare and grey except for golden bands covering his left arm. The third person was a woman with a Katana slung behind her back, with a blue blocky tattoo covering her left arm and belly, a Japan flag tank top, and a long headband tied across her hair.
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Thanks for the writeup, Hylebos! It was great to meet you at the show! I did a quick photo set of my own over at DBO: http://destiny.bungie.org/forum/index.php?id=16840 if you'd like to check them out!