Renascent discusses Killzone 2 title creation

10.03.2009
Killzone 2 is one of this spring's highest-profile games for the . For the , developer Guerrilla Games contacted Dutch motion graphics designer Joost Korngold -- aka -- to put together an exciting way to finish off the game. Set against Killzone 2's highly regarded in-game graphics, the titles use a stripped-back, simply textured approach for a striking, unusual look.

Korngold's original brief was to design a graphic style for the credit roll, which the team at Guerrilla would use to create the final roll once the full list of credited personnel was finalized. However, Korngold also proposed to the team that he should utilize his skills to create a more dynamic animation for the lead artists, developers and managers. This list was already fixed, so Korngold could create an elaborate title sequence that wouldn't need to be changed later, and which would follow on into the simpler main credit sequence that Guerrilla could modify.

Having worked with Korngold before, the team at Guerrilla were happy for him to "go wild" with the games assets -- including 3D models of characters, weapons, vehicles and other level materials -- to create the sequence.

"I first started working on how best to visualize these assets," says Korngold. He began by "stripping their original textures and playing around with some new ones. I tried face mapping them -- a single texture that deforms to the triangles/quads of the 3D model -- and I felt the result was really fresh, as it had the feel of organic wireframes that could have been drawn by hand rather than tight straight ones that feel too technical."

Korngold used flat-shaded colours to accentuate certain parts of the geometry, as well as flat-shading some surfaces with a print pattern. He says that his intention here was to make "stills seem like post-modern printouts with an analoque quality to them."