After tweeting a little with former Halo Environment Artist, Paul Russel, I was graced with the following concept art. Some of which has NEVER been seen before!
First up is this sweet “poster” of various ambient creatures, enemies and ships.
After looking each up, it appears that the Threeleg, Vulpard, Thorax, and Tankbeast have never been written about before. Hmm, HFFL SCOOP???
The Drinol I’ve heard about long ago. As too the Thornbeast. I really dig the Covenant Bomber.
I as yet can not confirm an official name for this beast. So, for now, I’m calling it a Murex. That’s a splice of the words mutant rex as in mutant tyrannosaurus rex. Possibly the Guta from Reach evolved from this???
An early sketch gives us land and air creatures. Again no names for either. For the bug, I’m going to make an assumption this turned into the Yanme’e. (Though I could be wrong, so don’t quote me there.) The other I’m going to call a Sand Dog. Again, not official names.
Finally we have this most awesome concept. The “Kestrel”. While the ship is known (barely), this particular design of it has NOT been seen before by the general public. Well, at least none that I can find that predates today.
Once again, I need to thank Paul Russel as well as Marcus Leto (Yes, THE Marcus Leto) for sharing these concepts.
I hope you’ve enjoyed these surprise concept pieces. Please share them and let people know where you saw them first. Right here on HaloFanForLife.com
-Sal
Dang are these images are cool. I remember about hearing about the Drinol and it not making the final cut for being in the game. Looks like one tough fight there.
I wonder if they would ever compile all of the concept art that never made it into the game and put it into a hard cover book. I would buy it.
I hear ya. I keep asking Sparth (concept artist, now director from 343) if they will put out an all concept book or a much larger “Art of” book. I’d love to see much more of the progression of designs from start to finish and even read about how the designs were thought up as well as why certain designs were picked over others and what the deciding factors were for the final version of something.