Hellchick

Paul Richards is an artist at Raven, a very talented artist that I'm fortunate enough to sit next to. I say this because it means that I get to watch some of his work unfold whenever I peek over at his desk, and I really enjoy that. This was especially great for me when he decided to concept up the Hellchick 2.0 model. (I should probably mention that she's slightly naked, so, you know, not-really-safe-for-work and all that.)

Toward the end of Quake 4, while most of us were in crunch mode, the artists and modelers had more time on their hands as they moved on to the next project. One of the modelers, Derrick Hammond, and Paul decided they wanted to collaborate on a project they could call completely their own. Out of the blue one day at work Derrick asked me, "hey Caryn...you want a Hellchick Quake 4 model?" Like I was going to say no to that. I was incredibly flattered that they asked.

So Paul decided to concept her, using the original Quake III Arena Hellchick model that Paul Steed and Kenn Scott from id Software originally did for me as inspiration (with doc rob doing the animations). For those not familiar with that model, the quick backstory is that out of the blue one day back in about 2000, Paul Steed offered to do a Hellchick .ppm file for me for the Major model from Quake III Arena. When I said thanks and that I was flattered and of course would love it, he came back with, "screw that -- Kenn [Scott] and I have decided that Hellchick needs to have a full-on, Steed/Scott hottie model." I couldn't believe they were going to do it.

(As a side trivia note, Steed used a photo of my face on that model. Graeme Devine, also formerly of id Software, also told me -- and I still don't know if he was telling the truth here -- that the original name of the Daemia model for Quake III Arena was Hellchick, but that Steed was told he had to change it, so he ran through possible permutations of the "hellchick" idea and came up with Daemia.)

Paul took Hellchick 2.0 in such a great direction for the new version, though, incorporating a lot of the mech and cyber influence from Quake 4. As he went through the four iterations of concepts, he solicited feedback from myself and from a few others we hang out with at work. Everyone seemed really interested in her development, not the least of which was me, of course.

The results are better than I ever could have imagined. Her mechahooves and her gauntlet are bad ass (one of the animators suggested that we make her blades pop out from the gauntlet one by one). Her stance is solid and powerful, and she's not small, which I love. She'll be a multiplayer model so she's going to be limited by the bounding box of all the MP models in the game, but we talked about how she likely stands about 6'5" or so. She looks like she could break your spine in half with one hand. I love the little touches, too -- the ridges that run up her thighs, and the hooves and tail that grow out of her spine, splitting her skin (not to take too much credit, but I'm quite happy that my suggestion on that fit enough with the model that Paul felt it could be incorporated). You can't tell, but in the larger versions of the concepts she has a nose ring. One day as I was looking over the drawings Paul looked up at me and said, "wait. You have a nose ring. So your model needs a nose ring. There."

Derrick is currently modeling her, and since he's doing it in his spare time there's no timetable on when she'll be ready. But in the meantime, she seems to have spawned some potential collaborative efforts in other areas. When Paul finished the final concepts, I thought to myself, "this character needs a game or a graphic novel wrapped around her." Now I know what you're thinking -- they already did it, and it was called Hellboy. But I think there's room in there for another badass demon.

When I showed the concepts to my very close friend chris, he thought the same thing and immediately set about creating a story around her. We combined some notes (we love to collaborate on writing) and came up with a story that we think is good. We set it aside as something to possibly work on later. chris really digs illustrated, graphic-novel style stories, and the hope was that this could turn into that.

When I mentioned it to Paul today, he said he'd always wanted to do something along the lines of a graphic short story, something 6-8 pages, so if chris had something scripted he might be up for doing its art. chris sent along what he had, Paul read it, and said that yeah, he'll start thumbnailing it over his vacation when he's traveling.

So I'm really excited to see all these collaborative efforts that have been spawned by my online handle. I couldn't be more flattered that people see something in the nickname or the "Hellchick persona" that people say exists and want to build on it creatively. As soon as the model is ready I'll definitely be finding out how we can release her to the public (there may be a slight issue with her nudity and Raven releasing her officially, so I have to look into that). As more develops on the writing front, I'll detail it here.