Few months ago Ubisoft (San Francisco, US) asked us (and another 5 companies) to make a research on packaging for their newest game: Assassin’s Creed II. Whole team was very exited because we had the opportunity to access early assets and previews of the game. As we are all gamers we were curious with what guys from Ubisoft came this time. We’ve read mini scenario of the game and it all sounded great. Interesting story, improved gameplay, italian architecture, many new quests for players and finally two blades! ;) Who wouldn’t be happy?

The guidelines from Ubisoft were to create dynamic cover where main character is in the center of attention, exposed in confident pose. We had to stick to the style of previous part of the game AC 1 but client also wanted to make some more explorations on different fields (like backgrounds, poses etc.) as well. Also important notice was to expose 2 blades of the assassin. The chosen Key Art was meant to be produced by Ubisoft’s development team.
First we did a lot of research about the time where main plot took place and checked many photos, drawings and inspirations from that time. We didn’t realized at first that there are so many rules for making the proper packaging. It’s not just a simple illustration, you need to have in mind many different, game key art regulations - for example in many countries there are restrictions which forbid to show blood or attacking the viewer directly.

Round one:
After brainstorm we did rough sketches of our ideas. Then we picked 3 of them that explored different directions: 1. the one where assassin is approaching his victim (slide 1-3), 2. the one with assassin in action showing the viewer his blade (slide 4-7), 3. and one more static where he’s watching surroundings from the height (slide 8-11). Our first goal was to draw assassin silhouette. We received some drafts from Ubisoft and based on them we were able to recreate basic look of the main figure. Of course we didn’t know how his outfit should look in detail so we made them to fit in overall color scheme and feeling.

Round two:
After round one we decided to go with more dynamic directions, where assassin is jumping into the group of people like wolf between sheeps. We wanted to create more dynamic and “badass” look of the assassin in the urban theme, with more people.

After few rounds guys from Ubisoft decided to stay with the most clean version that was produced for Game Informer Magazine as a cover by 3D artists from their development team (slide 7). But they liked the sitting pose so much that we were asked to make more research in this direction for Assassin’s Creed Bloodlines (PSP) cover. We explored further this pose and background behind it. After some work was done we  agreed to clean up the background a little bit to make the pose more standing out. Final Key Art for Assassins Creed Bloodlines - slide 8.

Final Covers (finally produced by Ubisoft):

Working with Ubisoft on Assassin’s Creed concepts was for us interesting experience. We’ve learned a lot and we are eager to buy this great game and test it as a players.

Many thanks for Grzegorz Domaradzki (our lead concept illustrator) and Marcin Gibowski & Pawel Swierczynski for taking part of the team developing concepts.

Right now we are running some more projects for Ubisoft. More to come soon.
In the meantime see you around in Italy! ;)

Related links:
Ubisoft
Assassins Creed 2
Assassins Creed Bloodlines PSP