Bart Walhout Brings the Characters of Horizon Zero Dawn to Life with Loving Detail
When you get a Character Artist with this level of skill, the results speak for themselves.
I have a terrible secret.
Shameful though it may be, I am a huge sucker for an Artstation art dump and if it is for a game or IP that I am keenly following than its almost a guarantee that I will be discovering a new artist and writing about them here. Some of my favorite discoveries are made whilst digging through the pile of gold that is a post launch NDA release.
All jokes aside, Bart Walhout is a flippin fantastic character artist at Guerrilla Games and has been elbow deep Horizon Zero Dawn: Forbidden West’s development from start to finish, or near enough to the start that he is likely foundational to the overall character development pipeline at this point. Looking at his timeline you can get the definite feeling that he had a specific goal in mind from the start of his schooling to his eventual hiring at Guerrilla, and that was to create beautiful characters no matter what and where.
I have recently started playing Horizon Zero Dawn again with my partner and that game has the dubious honor of being the only game I have ever felt like getting to “Platinum” , completing all achievements on the PS4/5. I say all of this only to highlight that the mind-blowing difference in these characters with only a few years difference is kind of intense. HZD’s characters were already great and hold up pretty well today but looking at this art you can really see the character team stepped their game up.
Bart Walhout has an amazing catalog of art and his passion comes through with his character creation. There are a ton of characters in his portfolio where he has had done a lions share of the finishing work, if not most of the work in general and his attention to detail for them is intense. Due to the nature of the world, materials for clothing and weapons are almost all small animal, small hide, furred and rich in detail while also having a technological aspect as much of their armor and decoration is from machines. The series as a whole and Bart specifically meld the two into a cohesive and beautifully diegetic whole.
My only real wish is for Bart to post some more of his own personal work! Follow him with me using the links below and hopefully we can see some of his own art shine through in the next few months.
Check out his Portfolio!
Connect Professionally on LinkedIn.
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