Film soundtracks are amazing things. One of the things I like to do when I’m thinking about the musical choices a film makes is to swap out a piece of music from a completely different movie — or even some of my own music — over a key scene, just to see how it changes the feel of the moment.
I love the idea that a piece of music can support, enhance, skew or even subvert the emotions on display.
Last month in our Q&A Ragdolls, Land Mines, and Tentacles, we promised to reveal the composer for Class3.
Today we’re excited to announce we’ve signed BAFTA award-winning composer Jesper Kyd to the project. Jesper is perhaps best known for scoring the Hitman and Assassin’s Creed series, both of which earned him numerous industry awards. Now Jesper’s capturing the Faded Americana style of Class3 in a dark cinematic score mixing live acoustic performances.
In January we posted a spy-cam video of the Lab that included some footage of the in-development version of Class3. You responded with a massive amount of comments and questions, so today we’re going to tackle some of them in a new Q&A.
Read on for fresh new details about Class3!
Happy 2012, fellow survivors!
After a well-earned break for the holidays, Team Zed is back in the Lab and pounding away at the code, art, sound, and design for ‘Class3′.
To celebrate the new year—and, okay, because we haven’t updated you in a few weeks—I took some “spy cam” footage in the Lab today with my trusty iPhone. We’re not quite ready to post official trailers at this point, but I snuck up on Foge as he was testing out some ambush functionality on the Lab TV, so you might catch a glimpse of some early-alpha Class3 gameplay goodness.
Or maybe more than a glimpse…
This week, Phinney, Reid, Kevin, and Scott (who you’ll get to meet soon) piled into a car and took a trip to Vancouver, Canada. Their destination? Animatrik, a company that specializes in motion capture animation. If you’ve ever seen behind the scenes footage of people running around in tights with little reflective balls all over them, that’s mocap, and it’s been used in movies for years. As it’s evolved over the past fifteen or so years, though, it’s also become an important tool for game developers.
To give you guys some insight into what motion capture is, how it works, and how it’s going to apply to Class3, I sat down with Reid to learn more about what our recent session was like. Read on to see what he had to say!
From the first time I saw Night of the Living Dead when I was 13, I was hooked. That stark, black-and-white photography, the unrelenting brutality of the walking dead, the pressure-cooker intensity of the conflict between those few desperate survivors, and that ending! Zombies had their hooks in me and never let go. Dawn followed Night, of course, and from there the rest of Romero’s works, Fulci’s Italian giallo zombie movies, anything I could get my hands on. I devoured the movies, dragged my Dungeons & Dragons group kicking and screaming into games of All Flesh Must Be Eaten, and generally watched, played, and read just about anything zombie-related I could get my hands on.
Still, just about any fan knows that all things zombie aren’t created equal. It’s a polarizing genre, encompassing classics of cinema like my old friend Night of the Living Dead, modern blockbusters like Zombieland, and, let’s face it, some pretty cheesy (but still fun) low-budget schlock-fests. Now that I get to do this for a living, I find myself analyzing the zombie stories I’ve loved for more than half my life, asking myself: What separates a fun zombie story from a great one?
Well, I’ve got a theory about that…
Frank: So, how many are you holding back?
Joe: How many what?
Frank: You know… bullets. For just in case.
Joe: Jesus, don’t even start that shit with me, man!
Frank: What? You know it’s better than some of the alternatives. You ever seen a person starve to death?
Joe: No, and neither have you.
Frank: Okay, but I have seen what those things can do to a person. And if it comes down to that or a bullet…I got three. One for me, one for Millie, and one for Peter.
Joe: I think I’m gonna be sick.
Frank: I know it’s ugly, man, but you got a wife and kids too. You ought to think about it. It’d be kinder.
Joe: Just…go away, Frank.
This isn’t Shakespeare. It’s also not Stephen King. It’s sure not Emily Post. Hell, it doesn’t sound like book or movie dialogue at all.
And that’s exactly why we asked Travis Stout to join Team Zed to write Class3.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving — the time when we look back at all the things that we’re grateful for in our lives and, of course, gorge ourselves on tasty, tasty brains turkey, stuffing, and all sorts of traditional holiday stuff (I want to eat ALL the sweet potatoes…). Since it’s also a time to be with friends and family, we’ll be closing down the Lab tomorrow and Friday, which means that we won’t be posting an article at the end of this week.
Don’t worry, though. Doug’s cooked up a new wallpaper to tide you over, and this one’s pretty freaking awesome. Read on to check it out.
A little over a month ago, we completed our final pre-production milestone for Class3. To celebrate, we took an afternoon adventure to Seattle’s iconic Experience Music Project (EMP) to check out an exhibit that was right up our alley — “Can’t Look Away: The Lure of the Horror Movie”.
Read on to learn what it’s all about and to see some awesome shots from our trip!
I first met Erik Schmidt during our trip to the firing range last summer. He was our instructor, the guy who stood next to us in our firing stalls and taught us gun safety, proper stance, and all of those other things we needed to actually hit our targets while not shooting ourselves in the foot. You know those times when you meet someone and you’re immediately amazed by how much they know and how much they genuinely love what they do? This was one of them.
As it turns out, Erik loves zombies almost as much as he loves guns, and he’s put as much thought into his own hypothetical survival plan as any of us. So much thought, in fact, that he’s become Brant’s unofficial firearms consultant (and personal training instructor).
In celebration of Veteran’s Day, I sat down with this bad-ass former Marine to learn a little more about his career and to get his thoughts on everything zombie — from his opinion on which caliber is best for taking out zeds to how he’ll be contributing to Class3.
Read on to see what he had to say!
Years ago, my future mother-in-law was curious about what I did for a living and asked me a question about being a game animator, “So do you have to draw every frame?” I thought to myself, “Thank God I don’t have to create 30 drawings for every second of gameplay.”
How could I explain it all? Sometimes what I do is technical, like when you adjust the weighting on a rig so moving a character’s wrist doesn’t make his shoulder flex in a weird way. Other times, it’s a form of acting, creating personality and mood with a stance or a movement. Often, it’s simply about getting the motion right, adjusting how a foot eases into or out of a pose, or showing kinetic energy transferring from one part of the body to another.
Working on a game, you use the same techniques as movie animators, but you often have extreme timing and movement restrictions to fit game balance requirements, and you rarely get to build an animation with just one camera shot in mind. You try to make things look great from every angle. It’s challenging, but when it all comes together, you take a beautiful, static model created by the art team and make people see it as a living, breathing being.
This is what I do.
Earlier this year we posted an open position for a talented animator to join Team Zed. A few short weeks later, we deleted it. Since it was rare for us to post a position on our website in the first place — most of us at the Lab have been working together for years — we immediately received questions about why we had removed the job post.
Simple: Reid Johnson had found us, and we’d found Reid Johnson.
Halloween is finally here and, as you can probably guess, it’s our favorite holiday! People cruising around in sweet costumes, horror movie marathons on TV, carving pumpkins, stocking up on copious amounts of candy (mmm…peanut butter cups)…
Best time of year? Yeah, pretty much.
While we can’t be there to give you a hand with the zombie makeup you should be rocking this weekend, Doug did whip up a new wallpaper to help you get in the spirit. Check it out!
We’ll send our final tally to the printer next Monday morning. When the shirts are finished, I’ll start packing them up and mailing them out, so you can expect to have yours a few weeks after that.
Thanks again for rocking the Lab colors with us!
Last week, we posted a new design article from Phinney that provided an in-game survivor’s take on what it takes to stay alive in the world of Class3. This week, we’ll answer a bunch of questions that you guys have asked on our website and on fan forums.
Read on to see the topics we’ve covered!
‘Class3’ has gone into production, and that means that we’re going to need a ton of art to fully flesh out the world. That’s why we’re excited to announce that we’ve partnered with the talented team at FUTUREPOLY Studios for our art production needs.
Headed up by Jason Stokes and Levi Hopkins, two of our good friends and former colleagues, the FUTUREPOLY Studios crew will be working side-by-side with our artists to create all of the visual details that we’ll need to bring Class3 to life.
Read on for more details!
The zombie apocalypse is coming. You want to know how everything works. How dangerous is it? How can you protect yourself? We have the answers, but how much can we really say?
Mystery and uncertainty are a big part of the zombie canon. You shouldn’t go in knowing all the ins and outs. You shouldn’t feel like everything is perfectly understood. The unknown is part of the drama, and the seeking answers is part of the challenge.
So today, we’ll share what we can. It’s not a catalogue of spoilers from the dev team. Instead, what follows are the thoughts and observations of a fellow survivor in McMillanville.
It starts with a single, stark fact of life: Everyone dies.
It’s been a while since we’ve shown off new fan art, so we’ll be wrapping up this week with a bunch of awesome pieces you’ve sent us since our last update. In this latest batch, we’ve got sketches, paintings, and even an awesome zombie puppet to show off!
Read on to check them out and to learn how you can send in creations of your own.
October’s here, which means it’s time for Halloween, ZomBcon — and Lab hoodies! We’re making a new batch of the sweatshirts worn by the members of Team Zed, and offering them for sale in the Undead Labs Gear Store.
Want a hoodie of your own? Read on to find out how to get one!
Dear Team Zed,
Today was a momentous day at the Lab.
As you know, pre-production is the project phase where we lay down the design, create the core technology, develop the art style, build the art production pipeline, and prototype essential gameplay systems. At the end of pre-production, we should have a no-bullshit, fully playable game. Of course, it won’t have the polish or scale gamers expect and demand, but it should be a real game. And it should be fun.
Today was our final pre-production milestone, and you guys delivered. Hard.
Happy Friday, everyone! You’ve sent in a batch of new drawings and paintings since last month’s fan art update, so it’s time for us to show these cool pieces off.
Read on to check out the art and to learn how you can send in creations of your own.
Headed to PAX this weekend and have the itch to chat with fellow zed heads? We’re not going to have a booth this year, but if you’re interested in meeting the UL team, you’re in luck! We’ll be at the show, wandering the floor and checking out the sights, so if you see someone in one of our brown Undead Labs shirts, stop them and say hey. If you’d like to meet up Friday afternoon to shoot the breeze with members of the dev team, drop us a line at community@undeadlabs.com.
Earlier on Friday, I will be joining a handful of other female developers to discuss careers in the industry, what it’s like to be a woman that works on games, and more. Look for “The Harridan’s Guide to the Game Industry” at the Serpent Theatre from noon to 1:00 PM.
Hope to see you at the show!
If this sounds like a dream job to you (or anyone you know), check out our newest job post to find out exactly what we’re looking for!
Last week, our art director Doug talked about his vision for the look of the Class3 world. Doug certainly has a strong vision and his concept art looks fantastic, but everyone knows that since this is an Xbox LIVE Arcade game, there is no way the game can really look like that.
I mean, come on, right?
When you think about the zombie apocalypse, zeds aren’t the only things that count. A huge part of an outbreak is the aftermath — the destruction of civilization and everything that goes along with it.
This setting has be a great inspiration for our art director, Doug Williams. By now you’ve probably seen a ton of his awesome concepts, but that doesn’t really tell you about his vision for the world of Class3 or the look and feel of the game.
That’s why I decided to sit down with him and get his thoughts on the visuals you’ll see in our world. Our conversation started with two words:
“Faded Americana”
Special effects and the modern zombie go hand in hand. If makeup legends like Tom Savini had decided to use their skills on romantic comedies instead of horror flicks, the entrail gobbling ghouls that we all know and love probably wouldn’t exist. Thanks to the creativity of these FX pioneers, a whole new genre was born, and generations of gorehounds were thrilled by their work. Some fans didn’t stop at just admiring the creations of the masters; they were inspired to make effects of their own.
Tim Shea is one of those guys.
I saw Tim’s work for the first time a few months back. He’d spotted one of our fan art posts and decided to send in pictures of a zombie head that he had made in his spare time. As a die-hard makeup fiend myself, I immediately bombarded him with questions and discovered that his passion for this stuff runs really, really deep. So deep, in fact, that he decided to surprise us with a mounted zed head for the Lab.
The world of special effects is really fascinating, especially when you dive into how props and prosthetics are actually created. To give you guys some insight into how it’s done, I decided to interview Tim about his sculpting hobby, his inspirations, and more. Read on to check out what he had to say!
If the zombie apocalypse struck tomorrow, who would you take with you? That’s a question we’ve asked before. The answers were very sensible. There was a lot of talk about survival experts, people with military experience, and people with practical, hands-on jobs.
It’s not a surprise that no one listed “computer programmer” as a requirement for their survival dream team. But before you rule out someone like me, consider this — your profession is just one part of your identity. There are a lot of traits that make us unique and experiences that could come in handy in a crisis. There’s a reason I became a programmer, and it’s the same reason you’d want me around after the apocalypse:
I’m obsessed with building stuff.
You know that TV show about those kids who sing all the time? You know, the one with the 20-somethings we’re supposed to believe are in high school? There’s a recurring gag on the show where the popular sporty kid throws a cold slushie in the face of one of the nerdy singer kids.
I myself have been on the receiving end of that kind of thing a few times in my life. I was a hardcore gamer in middle school, way (way) before it was cool to be a hardcore gamer. Let’s just say that the football dudes at my central Texas high school didn’t exactly respect my l33t skills at Ultima…um…1.
Later in life when I started working in the game industry I started receiving regular slushies to the face from some of my fellow developers. Metaphorically, of course. These were the guys who would listen to my super-brilliant game ideas or design proposals, and then tell me all the reasons they just wouldn’t work.
These slushie guys don’t sit around for years working on the mostest awesomest thing evar. They get shit done. They finish games and get them into our hands. They make it happen. Because they understand that the one thing that all of the greatest games ever made have in common is that they shipped.
John Zipperer is our slushie guy.
We’ve been getting tons of requests for new wallpapers, so here’s a Friday present for you — four kick-ass concept papers from Doug! Today we’re offering a foreboding McMillanville sunset, the over-run city of Dunniway, a horde of moonlit zeds, and the trek of a lone survivor.
Read on to grab them and decorate your desktops, Labs style!
Last week, we took a company field trip to a local gun range to get some hands-on experience with pistols. Only a few of us had actually shot a handgun before, and since we’re building a zombie survival game, we figured that it would be a good plan to make sure that everyone on the team has at least fired one before. I mean, how can you build something without knowing how it actually works?
The day was pretty amazing. As soon as we arrived at the range, we were given a short safety class. In a half hour or so, we had learned how to properly handle our weapon — how to carry it, how to check to see if it’s loaded, and how to hold it. Our instructor even drew little lines on our hands to help us remember the proper pistol grip. Before we headed into the firing lanes, we picked out a pair of ear protectors, a set of safety glasses, and our first spread of 9mm pistols.
Once we were on the range, the real lessons began.
We like to think of Seattle as the zombie capital of the world, and this weekend we proved it to the rest of the world (again) by reclaiming our zombie walk world record from New Jersey. With 4,522 registered zombies, our horde reigned supreme — by more 400 walking dead. Top that, Garden State!
If you couldn’t make it out, no worries! You can check out pics from the walk here in our Flickr gallery, in the official Red, White & Dead photo pool, and in the galleries on ZomBcon’s Facebook page.
Kudos to all of the undead that made it out for the festivities — we had a fantastic time and were proud to help sponsor this awesome event.
Happy Friday, zombie lovers! Since our last fan art update, you’ve sent us a bunch of new drawings, paintings, and even baked goods. We’ve passed them around, admired them, printed them out, and posted them on our wall.
Now it’s time for us to show them off! Read on to see the pieces and to learn how you can send in art of your own.
Today’s Tuesday, which means that in exactly one week, we’ll be closing our shop and getting your t-shirt orders ready for the printer! If any of you want to grab a Lab tee of your own, be sure to do it now. When the shirts are finished, I’ll start packing them up and mailing them out, so you can expect to have yours in a few weeks after we get them back.
Thanks for rocking the Lab colors with us!
I grew up in the small Central Texas town of Temple. Never heard of it? Most people haven’t. It’s about an hour north of Austin, and about half an hour south of Waco. You remember Waco, right? Yep, that’s my childhood stomping ground. That’s where I learned to play D&D, fell in love with video games, saw Dawn of the Dead for the first time, and pushed wheeled trashcans full of day-old Mexican food down the alley behind the restaurant with my car at 40 mph because there was nothing else to do.
Sigh. Good times.
Temple isn’t exactly the glitzy metropolis you’d expect to see in a game. If I’m donning my cape, mask, and lightning fists to take on some evil supervillains, I want to be somewhere sexy like Paragon City or Tokyo. If I’m taking up my two-handed mace to get my Paladin on, I expect the best chance to be admired is somewhere densely populated like Stormwind or Paris. When I suit up in my NFL-designed space marine combat armor, I look forward to dishing it out to the bugs on their homeworld of X’zzzt.
But the zed apocalypse? Forget the cities and the flashy locales — many of us will be holding back the rotting hordes in small towns just like Temple.
If you’re a zombie fan in or near Seattle, you owe it to yourself to free up next Saturday — it’s time for the annual Red, White & Dead Zombie Walk! This massive gathering of the undead is one of my favorite summer events. There’s live music, tasty beer, a costume contest, and oh yeah — thousands of people milling around in awesome zombie makeup!
This year’s event is particularly special. You see, last year’s walk made it into Guinness Book of World Records for the “Largest Gathering of Zombies”. Unfortunately, New Jersey yanked the title with a walk of their own, so the goal for this summer is to bring the zombie glory back to where it belongs — in Seattle.
If you’re thinking about joining our shambling horde, read on to see the full schedule of the day’s festivities.
If the zombie apocalypse hit each of our hometowns tomorrow, what would the world look like? While some of us live in huge cities like New York City and Los Angeles, many more of us come from smaller towns — ones that are strikingly similar to those in Class3.
As an experiment, we’re creating an “Undead Labs Outbreak Map” to visualize where all of us would be holed up during an outbreak. Help our research by adding your city, state, and country to our short form here. Next week we’ll share the results, so stay tuned!
Happy Friday, everyone! Last week, we posted an article from Phinney that explored the world of Class3. This week, we’ll answer the questions that you guys have asked on our website and on fan forums.
Read on to see what we’ve covered!
June’s here, and warm weather is right around the corner. To help everyone on Team Zed stay cool, we’re making a batch of summer tees. Since you guys have been asking about them, we’ll be making some for you too!
Read on to find out how to get your very own official Undead Labs t-shirt!
The setting is our world. The time is now, except everything’s completely gone to shit and it’s happened fast. You don’t know why or how any of this happened. The only thing you know is that dead people are up and walking and that, if you’re not careful, they will kill you too. Is the crisis worldwide or isolated? It’s hard to say. You’re cut off from the outside world and everything around you is in total chaos.
This is the starting point for our open world zombie survival game, code named ‘Class3’. If you’re a zombie fan, you’ve thought about this scenario before. There are three big elements. The first is the zombies themselves. You have to figure out how you’ll kill them, how to escape them, and how to avoid them in the future. The second is other people. They may want to help you. They may want to harm you. That’s where things start to get really interesting.
And then there’s that third element: the world around you. Maybe you’ve never thought of it in those terms before, but odds are the environment plays a key role every time you picture the zombie apocalypse. It’s not just a backdrop. It’s a place full of buildings to explore and loot, abandoned cars for making a quick escape, firearms to collect and use, food stockpiles to raid, hiding places to duck into, and propane tanks to turn into the world’s brightest and most short-lived zombie welcome signs. It’s a world of endless possibilities.
Today, I want to share our vision for the world of Class3.
