Hello Condemned! I’ve got something kind of neat for you today. We’re taking a look at what went into designing McGimble’s look.  Truth be told, when I was developing The Condemned, I wasn’t even planning on publishing it. I wanted to sell the publishing rights to another company. I figured I would throw some stuff together, let them take the core game engine, and throw it into their own universe. Kind of like what Fantasy Flight Games did with Netrunner. They put it in their Android universe, licensing the underlying game engine from Wizards of the Coast. But when I pitched the game to different publishers, nobody wanted to give me the time of day. Which sucked, but that’s the way the world works.

So now I found myself more or less running with what I had made. A lot of the Condemned were designed from inspirations taken from other media. McGimble, in particular, was based on this guy:

Macgyver is one of those super resourceful people that can use just about anything to get himself out of tight situations. While developing The Condemned, I made a handy type of person. It just seemed like it would fit. McGimble is that genius type who’s too smart for his own good. He’ll break something, just to learn how to put it back together. It’s a trope, sure. But it made sense at the time!

Anyway, I reached out to Siddhant Singh right around the time I was ramping up for the Kickstarter. Actually, he was the first artist I worked with! After pitching the concept of the game, what I wanted, etc, I sent him this:

Character name: McGimble

Traits: crafty, resourceful, thinks out of the box

Inspiration: MacGyver

Appearance: Male, mid-30’s to mid-40’s. Square jaw, dusty blonde hair. Short, but not super short. Think Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight. little bits of dirty medical tape wrapped around a knuckle on a random finger.

Clothing: Prefers trench coats and jackets with lots of pockets. Seems like he’s going to pull some weapon out of nowhere and completely wreck you. Pants have duct tape wrapped around the knees, various patches are applied to his clothing.

Pose: Looks like he’s got a bunch of junk in one hand and he’s forcing it into something else. Think thread spools, bolts, and nails being stuffed into a metal drinking cup. You have no idea what the actual F he’s making, and neither does he! but somehow, this contraption is about to ruin your day.

Starting out, I needed a reference sheet for other artists who would also be working on this game. Something that would be easy to read/understand, and let the artist create art of the character even if they didn’t design the character. Siddhant came back to me with this:

I know, I was pretty impressed, too! When it came time to do up the final artwork, we went with the pose in the lower right. I had Siddhant prep the sketch, and get it ready for a finished art piece. It took him about a week to finish. He had other projects in addition to mine, but that was fine with me.

And this was the final result! I’m really happy with how this one turned out, especially given I was figuring out what I needed out of my artists at the time. The first couple dozen cards were a learning process for both myself and the artists. We were figuring out what each other needed, how we ticked, etc. There were challenging moments, but overall it worked out in the end. Stay tuned for future Behind The Scenes articles, where we talk about what goes in to making The Condemned. Until then, thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in The Arena!