Jack Couvela Brief: Assassin's Creed: Character Research

Jack Couvela, from Ubisoft Reflections, has set a brief in which we need to design a new setting for Assassin's Creed.  The design can placed in any time period we like, and we need to design a character, a weapon/prop and a building designed around the climbing/free-running aspects of the game.

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet!!!

I'm a big fan of the Creed games, so this should be fun....hopefully.  For a couple of years now, I've been wishing they'd focus a game based in Victorian London.  I think the design of the city, the narrow streets and tall buildings will be ideal for the main character to scramble around.  The games are also synonymous with history, visiting landmarks, tweaking bits here and there for story purposes (which I love) and London is obviously embedded with a deep, rich history. What if our Assassin was framed for the Jack the Ripper murders?  What if he has to break into Buckingham Palace or Parliament?  Or scale to the top of Big Ben?  To me, it's ideal.

So, I decided to focus on the character first.  I wanted to create a great sense of believability with my character's costume.  You have to be able to look at him and instinctively know what time period he's from.  So, pulling in form lots of sources, I had a wealthy amount of reference material handy...

...a pretty intense amount of research if I'm honest.  One thing I was concerned about though was the fact that Victorian London people wore a lot of dark clothing.  And the famous white hood of Assassin's Creed would stand out.  HOWEVER, I remembered that the character Ezio wore a black costumer (in Revelations, I think??)  and it just looks...cooler.  So, I'm going to maintain a similar style in my character.

Next up,  sketches!