Jeff Zugale is a concept artist at Blind Squirrel Games and a concept artist and illustrator at Jeff Zugale Illustraton. He previously worked as a guitarist, singer, and songwriter at Steele, a comic book artist at Kindergoth at Bloodfire Studios, Senior multimedia artist at Edmunds.com, and a concept artist at 7 Studios.
Jeff studied at Gnomon Workship, Concept Design Academy Pasadena, and Gnomon School of Visual Effects.
Jeff is not credited for working on either Shane Acker's 9 (2005 short) or 9 (2009 film), but he was to be one of the concept artists for a video game adaption of “9” that never got developed nor released.
Filmography[]
Video Games
- Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) - Concept Artist
- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow (2006) - Concept Artist
Concept Art[]
Character Designs[]
Beetle Betty[]
Lead concept artist Miguel Lleras created a creature called the "Beetle Betty," which would burrow into the ground headfirst and then pop up an explosive device, like the awful "bouncing betty" anti-personnel land mine. Based on his design, Jeff came up with an "upgrade" to this beast.
Rat Stalker[]
They also needed an upgrade for a beast called the "Rat Stalker", again with heavier weaponry and a different skull design than the original. Jeff had a body design to work from, so first he tried a bunch of different small animal skulls and the team eventually decided on a ferret skull.
Hammer Beast[]
Hammer Beast was the last to be upgraded, which needed an upgrade and after testing various weapons, Jeff evnetually decided on a hatchet.
Environments[]
The world of "9" is a post-apocalyptic urban warfare zone, a sterile landscape inspired by the Austrian capital Vienna and in time period between WWI and WWII.
Battle Line Trench[]
One level design that Jeff worked on was an abandoned battle line trench with a destroyed tank sitting astride it, and the player's objective was to travel through the trench and then up over the top of the tank. They could see quite a bit of the surrounding area so it all had to be figured out. After climbing over the tank, the player would wind up back under it from the other side in this area, where they'd face the level boss. You can see the tank treads are the ceiling of the room.
Chruch Bell Tower[]
The next environment is inside a church bell tower. The player would have to climb the inside of the tower - the characters are only 6-8 inches tall, but the buildings are human-sized - by negotiating various paths up the walls, and by activating catwalks in various spots. I sketched in some of the catwalk paths over the actual 3D model of the tower interior.
War Torn Street[]
The last environment he did was a full level design called the War Torn Street. These show all the areas the character would be moving through from start to finish. In most cases the character would be moving from left to right:
Action Boards[]
Finally, Jeff came up with some story board, called "action boards," in order to demonstrate various gameplay elements to show the publisher, designers, modelers and animators the moves or actions sequences that the character could or would axiomatically have to do.
Staff[]
They wanted the main character to be able to use a staff to wedge into some particular gateways, to do a form of gymnastic bar vault move in order to get over places too wide to jump across.
Light[]
The next sequence shows one of the many things 9 could do. This one shows that when 9 finds himself in a dark place, this would be how he turns on a light on his staff:
Crossbow[]
The last action board demonstrates how the player would cross a chasm that is too far to simply jump over, and too dark to determine how far away the next platform is. The sequences shows how 9 uses a custom made crossbow appliance to fire a lit match to the other side to light the way. He then loads the crossbow with a fishhook and line so he can swing across.
