It has to be said, creating themed artwork for a game you have never played is never an easy task. There was the chilling trailer on WhatIsFEAR.com, and some 100-odd screenshots taken from early builds of the game, but finding the right balance required a little trial & error.


Project F.E.A.R. Design Inspiration
Click to enlarge

One of my favourites is this moody screenshot. I hope Photoshop purists will forgive my crappy font-work and see the intended imagery: the sole character, alone, with the encrouching shadows containing unknown nasties; I thought this embodied the concept of "fear" but Vivendi PR knocked it back, and back to the digital drawing board we went.


Project F.E.A.R. Design Inspiration
Click to enlarge

CaseSkins are printed at very high resolutions: 250dpi is the suggested minimum, and we were aiming to work at 300dpi. As a result, you sometimes gravitate towards a certain design based purely on the availability (or lack thereof) of suitably high-resolution artwork. Vivendi provided the source file for this cover of CGW magazine, weighing in at 40Mb and some 3425 x 5624 pixels!

However, as I alluded to, the design wasn't really flowing, and this guy was our only high-res artwork; even the largest screenshots were 'only' 1600x1200, and would look terribly blocky when scaled up to the required size.

With the deadline looming, it seemed that we were going to have to settle for less-than-ideal, when in rode a shining knight in the form of PCZONE magazine.


Project F.E.A.R. Design Inspiration
Click to enlarge

By a stroke of luck, the latest issue of the UK's top PC gaming magazine featured a big preview of F.E.A.R. and Vivendi's UK office had put together some custom artwork for the cover. VUG Australia agreed that it was perfect, and the insane-o-res file was quickly sourced and downloaded.

The design features the mysterious and creepy little girl character seen in several screenshots, and the word FEAR looks like it has been scratched in desperation using bare fingernails. The bloody footprints tell you that this chick is certainly no Girl Guide and the darkness of the whole thing is perfect.
Discuss this in the forums

Posted by sadffffff - Thu Jun 09 2005 09:29

couple errors in the article on the first page:

http://www.bit-tech.net/modding/2005/06/09/project_fear/1.html
1st page, doesnt start untill after the ads on the right stop using IE, just a whole lotta white space.

also in the first paragraph:
"Thus begins one of the [eurl=www.whatisfear.com/us/]scariest trailers[/eurl] for a computer game I have ever seen. F.E.A.R. stands for First Encounter Assault Recon, and your character is part of an elite military unit deployed to tackle supernatural and paranormal phenomenon; think Fox Mulder dressed in fatigues and packing an MP-5."
that EURL thing looks like a bit of code that isnt right.

...

Nifty case BTW

Posted by woodshop - Thu Jun 09 2005 09:30

I don't belive
 [eurl=www.whatisfear.com/us/]scariest trailers[/eurl]
is a valid web language.
:)

edit:
gerrrr sadffff you type to fast

Posted by Tim S - Thu Jun 09 2005 09:52

that is part of the language that we use to input articles in to the engine - easier than html. I don't know how that wasn't picked up on, but it is fixed now.

The IE bug is also fixed for that page.... it is a strange one that crops up randomly

Posted by M_D_K - Thu Jun 09 2005 11:17

heh looks like a good game, shame you've covered all the ventilation holes at the fornt of the case :p



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