Here's what's what. This game is a big milestone in my life. I still have really strong feelings for it, both good and bad. It was a totally crazy ride, but I'm very proud to have been part of it.

We worked on this project for 6 months in Montreal where we were unfortunately very poorly managed and had to deal with completely inadequate tools for what we were trying to do. The team kept getting bigger and bigger to try to work around the tools, but we were going nowhere fast. It all got the game put on hold for a month around Christmas 2009, driving about everybody near depression. Such a magical project slipping away between our fingers...

Coming back from the Holidays, the production and a diluted core team moved to Chengdu's studio in China for 5 crazy über intensive months, going completely bunkers trying to pull it off.

Apparently, somehow, we did, as it's been out there kicking asses pretty good for the past 10 years! (minus the little 6 years gap it wasn't available anywhere XD)

To name a few, mostly on the art side since I'm totally biased ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Jonathan Lavigne was game designer and did the art for the menus and world map;

Paul Robertson was lead animator on this and did all playable characters (except Knives Chau and Wallace Wells), strikers, almost all bosses and a bunch of other things here and there;

Justin Cyr animated most enemies and managed a bunch of people in Chengdu on secondary animations, color correction, head swaps, etc;

Jonathan Kim and Mariel Cartwright did pretty much all the rest, enemies, NPC, cut-scenes illustrations and what-not;

We also had a lot of help from a huge chunk of Chengdu's studio, mostly on the programming and secondary animation side and a few guys from Quebec's studio. If not for all of them, none of this would've been possible;

I was in charge of all the backgrounds, breakable objects and their animations and over all graphics supervision. I was also a pretty bad lead artist on two continents, if I dare say so myself :S

Here's almost everything I did on this project. Color studies, crappy sketches scans (sorry, all I have left after all this time), final art and some of the background animations I was able to put back together.

Hope you guys like this thread!

[ Feel Good Hit of the Summer - Queen of the Stone Age ]

//// This is the first background mock up I did on the project... I actually did a fair chunk of the first level's suburbs in a similar style before acknowledging it wouldn't be viable for the whole project and simplified everything down. Still ended up pretty close...

//// During the month the project was on hold, this shoot 'em up concept (by Paul Robertson and I) was actually considered as an option to try and save the work that had been done and still deliver something...

//// Those are some unused hipster dudes I did based on Paul's sprites.

//// These Portraits were drawn mostly by Jonathan Kim and Mariel Cartwright and I tweaked and cleaned them in pixel.

//// Character Selection Screen ALA Super Mario Bros. 2

//// Unused World Map Concept

//// Early on we wanted to have every character from the books as bosses, enemies, NPC or straight up playable characters. So there would have been mid-bosses in every levels before each ex encounter. Obviously we had to cut a lot of those and also some level parts, so I tried to put the concepts and studies back in here.

//// WORLD 1
Sub-boss here would have been CRASH AND THE BOYS, we managed to keep them as NPC in Patel's intro.

//// COLOR STUDIES

The game initially started in a moody High school flash back. I eventually simplified and used it in a sub-space level.

//// SKETCHES

//// FINAL ART

Lots of cameos and inside jokes all around. The core team's names on store signs. Brian's band "Kupek" as a graffiti. 25! in a window was the price of a taxi ride to the office. Some legal issues with a few real places too, so we had to change some names, the "Sneaky Dee's" comes to mind. The bus to "Drunk Town" is officially in the game...

//// COLOR STUDIES

We talked about having a skateboard handrail grind chase sequence after Lucas' fight with RPM gauges in the hud and everything, but it implied whole new sets of animation for every playable character so... snip snip

Casa Loma's staircase is actually pretty long, so the only funny thing to do if you can't make it as long or longer than in the books was to make it super small...

//// SKETCHES

//// FINAL ART

Legal issues here too, so Lee's Palace became Leo's Place...

This is the first and only level we really worked on for the 6 months we were in Montreal, which is why we were able to keep Envy and Lynette as sub-bosses on top of having Todd's levitating chase sequence, Bass and Boss Battle. It is also why almost all the others were cut from the game.

We even talked at some point about having a second/alternate boss battle inside Honest Ed's (R.I.P. <3) with Todd magically assembling crazy weapons from all the junk around him.

//// COLOR STUDIES

//// FINAL ART

Had so much trouble with that hard wood dance floor... It kept being flagged as a seizure hazard, until the very end of production. The high contrast of the multiple horizontal lines and the scrolling camera apparently didn't mesh well together... That's why it's so dark in the final...

//// COLOR STUDIES

This one originally started with a beach level with the guys from Super Spike V Ball as mid-bosses (I managed to bring some of the beach part in the Dodgeball Mode), then a street part with a fight against Winnifred Hailey jumping out of her posters before getting on the street car.

We also dropped a little stretch of China Town before the restaurant. Not mad about this cut honestly...

But then I really wanted to have the players cross Ramona's house before jumping down in her garden to fight Roxy, this is one of the things I kept as long as possible before having to finally cut it.

//// SKETCHES

//// FINAL ART

Here the garden part is named "Chengdu Gardens" in honor of our saviors. As for the Chinese symbols, I don't remember exactly what they say, but they make no sense in Chinese. They're just words that describe what they are like "Red Circle" and so on.

//// COLOR STUDIES

Julie's party started with an October, Halloween themed street bit that was cut, but we were able to keep Robot-01 as a sub-boss.

Then we got to do this unique Super Fighting Robot Boss battle on the rooftops, but we had to drop a lot in the Twin's lair. It originally had 3 floors instead of one: a basement dungeon, which was twisted back in WORLD 2 as the temple of Doom area, a hunted mansion 2nd floor from which I only kept the Shinning rug and then the Double Dragon 2 inspired shrine. You would have encountered the energy twin dragon's from the movie as sub-bosses on each floor before getting down to business with the K twins.

//// SKETCHES

Even some from the sections that didn't make the cut!

//// FINAL ART

//// COLOR STUDIES

This one was meant to be a bit longer to really feel a progressive weather change from winter to spring to summer and then to the eerie cemetery part.

It doesn't properly work, but I like to see the park as having one entrance and two exits. In WORLD 1 you saw the forest exit in the background and took the back alley exit. This time around, you see those back alleys in the background and you enter the forest...

I also think it would've been really nice if every character had its "Nega" counter part, so whomever you play with gets to fight his own evils, but it didn't make it through game design.

//// SKETCHES

//// FINAL ART

I was pretty happy with that hidden star door that appears through the branches.

Not sure the blue fog made it in the game though?

//// COLOR STUDIES

We were supposed to actually have a "lair of cool sh―" and a bar section before fighting Gideon. Had a lot more sceneries planned for the Techno Base windows too...

//// SKETCHES

All things Gideon + the K twins synth organ.

//// FINAL ART

//// A big let down for me is the subspace fight with Gideon, we knew it was a bit unclear as what to attack exactly and where the collisions actually are, so we had a big placenta bubble thing to go over the mutated evil exes lower body part that would have made all of that clearer, but it's integration was constantly pushed back until it was too late T_T

//// SUBSPACE
I thought we would have a lot more of those and we wanted to have the characters fly through them instead, or do all kind of cool tricks and references to old games like looping screen and stuff like that but it ended up being too much work for everybody.

//// FINAL ART

//// SHOPS

//// SKETCHES

//// FINAL ART

//// MR CHAU'S RANDOM ENCOUNTER
I'm quite proud of this one ^_^

//// COLOR STUDIES

I think this was originally intended for one of the many sates of Gideon's fight, before we introduced the idea of a Mr. Chau fight.

//// SKETCHES

//// FINAL ART

//// ENDINGS
It was meant to look more like old game endings where the characters are on a cliff and look at a vast land while credits unroll. It was getting extremely late in production, I tried something...

//// COLOR STUDY

//// SKETCHES

There's a bunch of different things in there. Endings, Dodgeball, Battle Royal, Character Select and the crane cable from WORLD 2's car challenge.

//// FINAL ART

Looks like time was really running out @_@ Look at those "cleaned" buildings LOL, they're exactly the same as the study...

//// BATTLE ROYAL
A little homage to some french marketing guy who kept promoting the game as being "all about kisses and cows", the tag line for the game being "kisses and chaos".

//// COLOR STUDY

//// FINAL ART

//// DODGEBALL
Here I re-used the WORLD 4 beach level idea and we actually put the Super Spike V Ball dudes that Paul had designed in the crowds.

//// COLOR STUDY

//// SKETCHES

These were initially for WORLD 4's Beach intro.

//// FINAL ART

//// And that's that! My contribution to this cult classic...