Hey everyone, I’m Marco Mazzoni, concept artist on Battletech and now Co-Art Director on Urban Warfare. I just recently joined the studio full time in August but before that I was contracted to design some various vehicles and turrets as well as special ‘Mech add-on geometry. You can see some of that work as well as my contributions to Catalyst Game Labs’ tabletop BattleTech game over the last 2 years at my website or artstation page.
Thanks to an older brother with a small library of RPG books and painted minis, I’ve been a huge fan of everything Battletech since the late 80’s. When I finally picked up my own copy of the 3025 Technical Readout, I was obsessed. The designs, the descriptions… everything just clicked with me and I did everything I could to get my friends into it as well. We didn’t have the patience or understanding of the rules to play very often, but that didn’t stop us from painting the minis and drawing ‘Mechs in our notebooks. Fast forward a few decades and I’m still drawing ‘Mechs turning each other into scrap, but now I actually get to contribute to BATTLETECH while doing it!
Today I’m going to give you a peek at the design process that led to our final Hatchetman design. Duane Loose’s original design in the 3025 TRO was always one of my favorites so I definitely felt the pressure to do it justice. It would have to stand next to the amazing Piranha Games ‘Mechs we’re currently using, so conforming to that style was a major consideration from the start as well. Another constraint was that HBS did not want the hatchet to be construed to be utilizing some sort of new “handheld melee weapon system”, so the ‘Mech couldn’t look like it was actually “holding” a hatchet. For the first round of sketches, they wanted to try having it integrated into the forearm.
With those things in mind, I jumped on my iPad and sketched out these 3 different takes. There were elements from all 3 that we liked, but overall, we weren’t happy with the hatchet and the silhouette still needed to get chunkier to fit the MWO style.
After a few more rounds of this, we found a direction for the body that we were happy with. Now it was time to refocus on that hatchet and the head fin details. (Side Note: in the lore, the Hatchetman has a full head ejection system, so I wanted to put visual emphasis on that, although there’s no actual gameplay behind it) While the hatchet still wasn’t quite there, #5 seemed to be on the right track at least so it was time to move on to the next step and see if we could solve that in the final design.
Now Typically for this stage, I’d crank out some tight line drawings and there might be some back and forth with the 3D artist to make sure everything translates, but I’ve recently been playing around with sculpting in VR using Oculus Medium and I felt like this would be a great opportunity to see how far I could push it. Here is one of the first passes on it, blocking out the major forms.
The Hatchet still wasn’t working for us. It was too anemic, but there was a concern that if we made it much larger it would run the risk of clipping through the shoulder or leg, limiting movement potential during non-combat gameplay. It was at this point that someone came up with the idea of having it retract into the forearm and deploy only during melee attacks. Now, I know there wasn’t precedent for this in lore and I also knew it was going to make it even more difficult to design, but I kept imagining how cool it would look to have this thing flung out like a switchblade before chopping into another ‘Mech and I couldn’t stop smiling, so I went back to the drawing board and started cranking out sketches to make it work. This gif is where I think it started to take shape.
…And here’s where the final design ended up. This version was still just a concept model with extremely rough geometry, so it needed to get handed over to a real 3D artist for development into a proper in-game asset. This approach meant far less guess work and translation for the modeler, so other than widening out the shoulder joints and opening up the ankles a bit for animation purposes, this is extremely close to what we can expect to see in game.
Here's a video turnaround
While the final concept was getting modeled for real, I moved on to the heraldry set. I still love to paint minis in my free time, so this stage is like icing on the cake for me. I love trying to find new shapes to put emphasis on with these patterns to help bring out the ‘Mech’s design. The names are just something I use to inspire me while I’m working, but it’s also a helpful label when talking about them with the art team.
The last step was to show the whole thing off in the marketing image for Flashpoint, so I went back into Oculus Medium and reposed it to look like it’s about to take a final swing on a poor Locust. After a few quick thumbnails, it was off to Photoshop to move some digital paint around.
And here’s the final result.
I’m still excited that I had the chance to work on this, but my favorite part has been hearing your reactions to finally seeing it in action. I can’t wait to hear some of the stories you’ll have trying to get into range with this thing when you finally get your hands on it later this month!
Thanks to an older brother with a small library of RPG books and painted minis, I’ve been a huge fan of everything Battletech since the late 80’s. When I finally picked up my own copy of the 3025 Technical Readout, I was obsessed. The designs, the descriptions… everything just clicked with me and I did everything I could to get my friends into it as well. We didn’t have the patience or understanding of the rules to play very often, but that didn’t stop us from painting the minis and drawing ‘Mechs in our notebooks. Fast forward a few decades and I’m still drawing ‘Mechs turning each other into scrap, but now I actually get to contribute to BATTLETECH while doing it!
Today I’m going to give you a peek at the design process that led to our final Hatchetman design. Duane Loose’s original design in the 3025 TRO was always one of my favorites so I definitely felt the pressure to do it justice. It would have to stand next to the amazing Piranha Games ‘Mechs we’re currently using, so conforming to that style was a major consideration from the start as well. Another constraint was that HBS did not want the hatchet to be construed to be utilizing some sort of new “handheld melee weapon system”, so the ‘Mech couldn’t look like it was actually “holding” a hatchet. For the first round of sketches, they wanted to try having it integrated into the forearm.
With those things in mind, I jumped on my iPad and sketched out these 3 different takes. There were elements from all 3 that we liked, but overall, we weren’t happy with the hatchet and the silhouette still needed to get chunkier to fit the MWO style.
After a few more rounds of this, we found a direction for the body that we were happy with. Now it was time to refocus on that hatchet and the head fin details. (Side Note: in the lore, the Hatchetman has a full head ejection system, so I wanted to put visual emphasis on that, although there’s no actual gameplay behind it) While the hatchet still wasn’t quite there, #5 seemed to be on the right track at least so it was time to move on to the next step and see if we could solve that in the final design.
Now Typically for this stage, I’d crank out some tight line drawings and there might be some back and forth with the 3D artist to make sure everything translates, but I’ve recently been playing around with sculpting in VR using Oculus Medium and I felt like this would be a great opportunity to see how far I could push it. Here is one of the first passes on it, blocking out the major forms.
The Hatchet still wasn’t working for us. It was too anemic, but there was a concern that if we made it much larger it would run the risk of clipping through the shoulder or leg, limiting movement potential during non-combat gameplay. It was at this point that someone came up with the idea of having it retract into the forearm and deploy only during melee attacks. Now, I know there wasn’t precedent for this in lore and I also knew it was going to make it even more difficult to design, but I kept imagining how cool it would look to have this thing flung out like a switchblade before chopping into another ‘Mech and I couldn’t stop smiling, so I went back to the drawing board and started cranking out sketches to make it work. This gif is where I think it started to take shape.
…And here’s where the final design ended up. This version was still just a concept model with extremely rough geometry, so it needed to get handed over to a real 3D artist for development into a proper in-game asset. This approach meant far less guess work and translation for the modeler, so other than widening out the shoulder joints and opening up the ankles a bit for animation purposes, this is extremely close to what we can expect to see in game.
Here's a video turnaround
While the final concept was getting modeled for real, I moved on to the heraldry set. I still love to paint minis in my free time, so this stage is like icing on the cake for me. I love trying to find new shapes to put emphasis on with these patterns to help bring out the ‘Mech’s design. The names are just something I use to inspire me while I’m working, but it’s also a helpful label when talking about them with the art team.
The last step was to show the whole thing off in the marketing image for Flashpoint, so I went back into Oculus Medium and reposed it to look like it’s about to take a final swing on a poor Locust. After a few quick thumbnails, it was off to Photoshop to move some digital paint around.
And here’s the final result.
I’m still excited that I had the chance to work on this, but my favorite part has been hearing your reactions to finally seeing it in action. I can’t wait to hear some of the stories you’ll have trying to get into range with this thing when you finally get your hands on it later this month!
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