DiipuSurotu
Banned
We all know about Fortress, the cancelled Ivalice/Final Fantasy XII followup that was being developed by Swedish company GRIN in 2009 (if you don't, see the Wikipedia article of the game). Following the cancellation of the game, many ex-GRIN employees updated their websites and portfolios to include pieces of concept art, one track, and a few videos of the project. However, only a few amount of these assets have received mainstream attention.
I'm creating this thread to gather and display in one place all the various Fortress assets that I have found throughout my research.
Let's start with these photos taken by an anonymous tipster who visited GRIN's offices shortly after the company went down. You probably already know about them:
Source:
http://kotaku.com/5358430/a-final-look-inside-grins-fortress/
-----
Now here are two videos by lead technical artist ANDERS BODBACKA, showcasing none other than the characters Basch and Larsa, returning from FFXII:
Here is another video, by character animator FRANCESCO CAROVILLANO, showcasing a few animations from the game:
There is also the infamous tech demo that you've most likely already seen:
-----
One track from the project has been publicly released. It is an epic 7-minute piece by music director ERIK THUNBERG. It includes the traditional "Prelude" melody:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100804155519/http://www.starsounds.net/
-----
A programmer who worked for GRIN and goes by the pseudonym "Vim" on his blog describes his contribution to Fortress as follows:
After Bionic Commando I got to work one month on this final project at Grin
The core game was about you and a small group of loyal soldiers defending the fortress against a army invading from the sea. They had ships and monsters in endless supply and you had to keep your troops morale high and move around the fortress and defend key areas of it as the enemy attacked. Between attacks you could travel inland and explore some form of ancient temples or something.
My task was to create a system that would support a huge amount of characters fighting in and around the fortress. Besides the need for the player to be able to jump in and affect all battles a system to script events in the combat was also needed. All without making them look like bad background actors in a movie. The goal for the game was to keep around 2200 characters in the combat, 2000 attackers and 200 defenders.
Source:
http://spinningcubes.com/?page_id=2858
-----
Alright. The following sections will showcase all the pieces of concept art and 3D art that I have found, sorted by artists. When available, I have also included quotes about the project from these artists, in italics. You will recognize a few FFXII elements such as recurring enemies, Ashe, Gabranth's armor, the Dalmascan flag, etc. You can also have a relatively good idea of the geography of the titular Fortress by watching for the big landmarks such as the giant tree at the top, the floating cathedral, the distinctive towers, etc.
-----
BJÖRN ALBIHN (lead character artist)
“Fortress” was the last project I was involved in at GRIN, and it was a game with an epic scale both in story and production values. It was cancelled after a few months into preproduction and our time spent on it was very brief although I feel it showed much promise.
I worked closely with the concept artists and Art Director during this project creating 3D concepts of weapons, enemy characters and monsters and also one of the game’s bosses.
The main enemy faction invades from the sea and their culture is most closely reflected by the vikings. They also seem to be very influenced by the sea and it's creatures. Their decorations upon their armor and weapons are of waves, fishes, octopuses and other sea monsters.
Giant
The giants carried several weapons such as huge stone axes and gigantic chain weapons. One of the more unique weapons designed was this club that had living and burning creatures attached to it. The creatures shrieks out and burns everything around it when the club is swung.
"Living Weapon"
The giants carried several weapons such as huge stone axes and gigantic chain weapons. One of the more unique weapons designed was this club that had living and burning creatures attached to it. The creatures shrieks out and burns everything around it when the club is swung.
"Boss Creature Mockup"
This huge creature was a very early mockup of one of the game's bosses. At first one of the arms would attack the player from beneath the ground and the player would think that the enemy is some kind of snake monster. As more arms would emerge the situation would become worse and finally the boss would rip up the wall to reveal it's gigantic gaping mouth and start to eat the unfortunate ones caught in the arms.
One of the suggestions to take down this monster was that the player would be required to mount up and ride close to the seaweed hanging from the back of the creature to jump and climb atop it. Up there the paler would drop bombs into the many holes the creature had upon it's back while fighting of the creatures that are in fact living inside this huge beast.
Here are some of these inside the game engine as early mock ups to test proportions and scale.
Ingame Tests
Sources:
http://cargocollective.com/albihn/107280/-Fortress
http://www.albihn.net/projects/296/
http://www.albihn.net/107280/ Fortress (dead link)
-----
MARTIN BERGQUIST (lead concept artist)
Production paintings:
Layout sketches:
Character design:
Storyboard:
Sources:
http://martinbergquist.blogspot.fr/
http://www.martinbergquist.com/
-----
PETER JOHANSSON (senior concept artist and assistant art director)
Key experience
* Concept art
* Concept modelling
* Technical design and solutions for game content
* Art direction for environments
* Level design and composition
* Follow up on production
Environment related art:
Character related art:
Schematics and technical art:
3D models:
Sources:
http://artbypeterj.com/
http://www.pressfire.no/spill/532/screenshots/555
-----
KENNETH JOHANSSON (senior character artist)
Source:
http://www.kennethj.net/wp/project/fortress/
-----
NASIER ABDOEL (senior artist)
Studio GRIN a game company that i used to work for, teamed up with Square Enix to do a project for them, called Fortress. I worked as a concept artist for 5-6 months on this before it unfortunately got canceled due to many reasons.
Source:
http://lastofseven.blogspot.fr/2011/02/fortress-centipede-concept.html
-----
DANIEL CONWAY (concept artist)
Another X-GRIN concept artist here, its nice that we can finally show this stuff, guess every cloud has a silver lining after all so yep im currently looking for a full time job while doing some freelance stuff.
Sources:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=167132&p=2403737#post2403737
http://arcipello.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=/
-----
JOAKIM HELLSTEDT (concept artist)
Sources:
http://www.joakimhellstedt.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20101014213208/http://www.joakimhellstedt.com/
-----
TONY HOLMSTEN (concept artist)
When I was working at GRIN in 2008-2009, we landed a gig to make a huge open world RPG for a well known company. However development was troublesome with no real vision from the management, which lead to the game's cancellation .
The concept art team was tasked to create the world, the characters and the overall style of the art direction. Here are some samples.
Additionally, Tony Holmsten posted the following message on a forum shortly after the game's cancellation concerning his view of the project:
The only thing i can say to us , concept artists, defence is that, we did not even know what game/brand it was until the very last two months or something before grin went bankrupt (I have no idea what grin's decision behind this was). So we had been working several months without any proper art direction just doing something "fantasy:ish". And in the end they finally told us what we were doing, and said "Now we have to remake everything, and make it look more like... " It was a complete disaster, a shame, it could have been good.
Sources:
http://web.archive.org/web/20110702100754/http://www.tonyholmsten.com/fortress.html
http://www.tonyholmsten.com/68197/593084/gallery/cancelled-rpg-game-2009
http://tonyholmsten.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=/
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=167132&p=2425908#post2425908
-----
Jakob Tuchten (concept artist)
Source:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=167132&p=2424284#post2424284 (dead links)
-----
TOMISLAV SPAJIC (environment artist)
I worked on the environment models and textures.
A important thing with the texturing for this project was the way we reused textures in the UV space. Therefore we had to keep that in mind when we made the models.
Sources:
http://www.clayman.se/#section-7
http://web.archive.org/web/20100812100817/http://www.clayman.se/
http://www.pressfire.no/nyheter/Xbox360/1108/grin-jobbet-med-final-fantasy-spill
-----
And that's it for now. These assets were collected sporadically in my free time between 2009 and, well, yesterday (which is why I know some links that are now dead links). There might still be more out there.