Since the development of the first Borderlands was such a mad dash to the finish, we didn't have much time to stop and think about how we made what we made.

One of the first challenges I tackled was to create a Style Guide for the franchise. This document was essential for onboarding new hires, and quickly teaching partners how to create content in the Borderlands way.

I also created the prototypical Borderlands 2 logo seen above. I attempted to communicate the evolution of the brand by tilting the Vault symbol, adding depth to the text, and a dynamic splash of Eridium in the background.

Design and narrative wanted to add a new alien element to the game and this sketch became the inspiration for the effects. I incorporated the hand drawn lines and paint splatter effect to add an illustrative touch that harmonized with the games signature black line work.

In a sense Eridium was "all inks", which were so central to the Borderlands art style, that they naturally felt powerful.

One of the consistent pieces of feedback from playtests and customers of the first Borderlands was that after hundreds of hours of play, the endless stretches of tan desert became repetitive and dull.

Expanding the color range was simple in concept but the challenge was not damaging Pandoras reputation as the ass-end of the universe.

There were a couple keys to making this work. The first was to make sure that environment colors never got too saturated. The second, was keeping shapes aggressive and dangerous looking. Even the grass had serrated edges that looked like they might cut you.

Initially I struggled with the idea that anyone could represent a threat to Pandora. It was already a hellhole, how could anyone make it worse?

The answer was for Hyperion to "Pave the Planet". What better way to ruin the most awful place in the universe than by cleaning it up and plastering corporate bull all over it.

Hyperion represented everything I disliked about big business, and by contrast the dangers of Pandora became downright warm and inviting.

Even with the bold changes to the games color palette I wanted to be sure that if you saw a screenshot of the game, you would know it was Borderlands 2.

To solve this problem I came up with the concept of the Hyperion Moon base. This giant structure blotting out the sky was Handsome Jacks death-star and monogram in one, complete with the ability to deploy enemy robots anywhere on Pandora.

I really liked that it appeared to lean forward, looming menacingly over everyone on the surface.

We knew we wanted to expand the ability for players to customize their characters in BL2. But the challenge was that given the game was a first person shooter, would players really care what they looked like?

The solution I pitched was to back out of the players head when they entered the menus and let them orbit the character freely. You can see the UI in action here.

Above you can see the initial map I created to more clearly define the manufacturers in BL2.

Each aesthetic reflected the gameplay of its manufacturer and through that harmony, attempted to appeal to a different personality.

It was a distinct goal to ensure that players would never agree on which manufacturer was the best.

The (rather blurry) image above shows a test level I built to create the hundreds of different character customization options that could be unlocked in the base game.

This example demonstrates the wide range of possibilities provided by the material customization system.

The idea behind pink brick was to make sure that we gave players the freedom to express themselves however they wanted, even if it made the art feel a bit anachronistic.

This was somewhat at odds with our goals of creating a world that didn't end up looking like unicorn vomit but, in the end we decided that player agency was more important. Also I'm pretty sure we eventually put unicorn vomit in the game anyways.

This is one of several concepts I created to previsualize Zer0s "assassin mode". I liked the image but it didn't quite match the style of the character.

This is a material I developed that was used on all Hyperion products that featured the glowing blue eye. It was a nice upgrade for CL4P-TP's eye as he was often featured in cinematic closeups.

I wanted to punch up the color and variety of scenes that the day night cycle could create, to help prevent color fatigue during long play sessions.

I adapted the original time of day tech and added additional mask tracks to manage stars, aurora, and fog.

Finally I added a second set of coordinates to the top of the sky sphere to blend in a top down planar map for a seam free cloud cap when the sky was overcast.

The sprawling concrete surfaces of the Bloodshot Ramparts looked really barren in early versions of the level.

To address this I created custom macro noise patterns that helped to break up the repetition.

To make the composite textures feel hand painted I generated an edge mask at the boundary of the two textures to blend in a dark ink line.

As mentioned previously, I hand authored hundreds of materials used for character customization. One late night at the office I think something snapped and as I was making this pink skin I created a two horned unicorn, the "Pandoracorn".

This creature ended up being really popular among the devs, eventually inspired the creation of the much loved "Butt Stallion".

An unsung hero of our environment design for the larger zones were these seamless road materials.

They essentially blended the world space terrain textures up into the road texture using vertex channels and mask textures.

The key to making them completely seamless was the ability to colorize individual vertices to match whatever lighting was on the terrain. It was a bit time consuming, but it looked great and was done as a final clean up pass once all the levels were locked down.

Some of my favorite moments in the game are Sanctuary taking to the sky. It just felt so unexpected when it happened, and made for a really great moment when players got to visit the airborne version.

I contributed the sanctuary mesh, some sequencer work, and some visual effects to several of these scenes.