For The Fast and The Furious, the Producer at Universal was dealing with a Japanese developer that was continuing to deliver game assets below the quality that Universal expected.

The game was already well into its production cycle, so I focused on two elements I could improve upon directly: Interface and Cinematics. Additionally, I thought it important to provide the developer direction and examples illustrating a better approach to lighting for the game as well.

On the upper left is an image that shows the before and after for one of the menu screens. Each menu screen was influenced by a colored box within the game. If you saw a blue box on the side of the road, that represented you could go to a car maintenance menu where you could upgrade your equipment. Keeping with the color theme from the game, I made the associated menu screen a similar value but also made the design sexier.

The colors I used were based on the opening title cinematic where a number of colors representing speed lines spell out the title then race off. You can see it here. I decided that respecting the same color theme throughout the game would be a good unifying element.

Next was the Heads Up Display (HUD) which initially consumed an enormous amount of real estate on the screen and needed to be more elegantly redesigned. At left is an example of the page I sent the developer which shows my work and theirs. I also supplied them with the actual 3D model I had made it with and all the support files so they could easily make changes and additions.

I wanted all the fonts throughout the game to be consistent so I sent out another screen that identified which fonts should be used where and exactly what size we should see them.

The lighting in the game would gradually change from day time to night time, so I supplied the developer with this model, which uses the same technique as the HULK and several other street-centric games we had in production at Universal. (To help with translation, my english on these documents is super simple.)

Another important element of the interface popped up when the player received a cell phone call and a particular face would be visible in the screen. The Producer, wanting to stray away from any 3D rendered faces, opted to have these rendered in a more stylized technique. 60 hand-inked head shots were created by local cartoon artist Jeff Watts and colored by freelance artist Phelan Sykes.