Happy New Year, everyone!

We've got another interview for you, this time with our Lead Artist. Christian has been working on The Last Taxi for almost 4 years. He designed and created much of what you will see in the game. 

As one of the first people to touch this project, Christian had his hand in the early concept looks of The Last Taxi as well as most of the character designs.

Here's a look at what inspired Christian in creating his part of the beautiful world of The Last Taxi.

Q: Where do you draw your inspiration from, when working on your own art?

Christian: I watch a lot of anime and sci-fi movies. I also love playing games that depict different genres in new and creative ways, specifically like Horizon Zero Dawn or League of Legends.  I think those are my main inspirations for my art.

Q: Did you always want to work on video games or did you aspire to do different types of art?

Christian: Initially, my main goal was to work as an animator/illustrator then I eventually got interested in concept art. I started working in the gaming industry by accident, but it turned out to be a fun industry because you can mix animation, illustration and other forms of media into any game you're developing!

Q: Who was your favourite character to design?

Christian: Ivan McCafferty was an interesting one. he doesn't really have a mouth on his design but we kind of used the same process as any other character to create a talking mouth from the slats of his mouthpiece. The shape of his silhouette is probably the most identifiable one in the game and his gestures accentuate his personality for sure!

Q: What’s the funniest fix that you had to make in The Last Taxi?

Christian: I think it was when I was working on the character animations. Characters sometimes get distorted when you apply different sets of joints, so they ended up creating lots of funny poses unintentionally.

Q: What is your favourite area in Last Taxi?

Christian: No doubt it's the entire Neon District Structure. Redesigning it was quite a challenge. I had to work with the existing gray box and turn it into something interesting. There were a lot of steps involved in making it, from thumbnails to plotting out the space required for each piece while also making it work in 3D. Balancing the scale and detail without creating pressure on the polycount of each piece was tough.

Q: What’s your favourite video game?

Christian: I like playing League of Legends with friends, but I'd consider Horizon Zero Dawn to be my favourite.

Q: Are there any funny stories that come to mind from working on The Last Taxi?

Christian: I think it was when we were trying to figure out the scale of the characters in VR. in order to figure out the tallest height we would use Kyle (our Lead Coder) and we used me as the smallest. That was pretty funny!

Here are some of the concepts that Christian worked on, alongside their final look in-game:

Windswept Estates:

Oil Refinery:

If you'd like to check out some of Christian's personal artwork, head over to his Instagram: @artofcham!