In BioShock Infinite’s

Loading

Trinder’s original design (left) alongside the in-game version with Rapture-themed changes.

While Old Man Winter’s basic functionality is likely no surprise to longtime BioShock fans, its origin story might be. Back in May, long before Infinite’s DLC was even formally announced , a propaganda poster advertising Old Man Winter was posted on 2K’s forums by Joe Trinder , a graphic designer who created it. Trinder’s design was immediately praised by other fans, quickly gaining attention on Reddit and even earning the approval of BioShock creator Ken Levine Within a day, Irrational contacted Trinder and asked for permission to publish the poster on its Facebook page. A month later, the team bought the design from Trinder and told him they planned to use it in the game.“I can’t believe it,” Trinder told IGN. “I mainly do t-shirt type graphics, but I studied illustration in school. I’ve been doing it now for six or seven years. I’ve done pretty well, but this is definitely the biggest thing that’s happened so far for me in terms of my art.” Trinder says he often likes to take time between jobs to do passion projects of his own, and after finishing Infinite, a BioShock-themed design came naturally for him. “I’m a huge BioShock fan, from the first game, so I’ve done a bit of BioShock fan art,” he said. “It took me about a week to finish the whole thing.”During a recent visit to Irrational, Ken Levine explained that he knew he wanted the art for the game as soon as he saw it. Since Burial at Sea returns to Rapture, a few slight alterations had to be made to Trinder's original piece (Vigors are once again called Plasmids, for example), but the design is left almost entirely intact.“I just saw the piece of art and I was like, ‘holy s**t, this is f**king great,’ then talked to the legal department to see if we could use this, because we love it,” Levine told us. “Generally, I go to DeviantArt all the time, and I have my favorites I pull stuff off, and I’m constantly trying to think of ideas about how to leverage the fan community, because some of them are amazingly talented.”“The first week after Infinite came out, I used the large format printer and printed out this giant poster of maybe 20 or so of my favorite fan art pieces,” animation director Shawn Robertson added. “We love that stuff. We love seeing the reaction of how people are seeing the game and what they’re latching on to.”During Burial at Sea: Episode One, Booker encounters posters for Old Man Winter in an elevator early on and later finds that he needs to obtain the Plasmid in order to progress. He eventually does so in a section of Fontaine’s Department Store that’s been converted to "Rapture on Ice," a winter-themed area that’s been taken over by splicers. Until he was contacted for this piece, Trinder had no idea how extensive his design’s involvement was (and still didn’t want to know too much so he can be surprised when he eventually plays).“I still have no idea what the form is in the game,” he explained. “They just said they want to buy it from me, they said they were going to be using it. I asked a couple questions and really wanted to know, but they were pretty tight-lipped. I really had no idea what they were doing it with it. I didn’t think it was going to be to this degree. I thought maybe it would be an extra collectible thing in the DLC, kind of like they did with Clash in the Clouds before that. They had a whole library of concept art, so I figured it might go that route. But I never expected it to be this involved in the game.”Trinder said he’s excited to learn that Old Man Winter will be more heavily involved than he expected, and he’s flattered by all the attention he’s received. “It’s just amazing. I think once I actually see it a little bit more fleshed out into what it is, it’ll have even more of an impact,” he said. “I’m still very happy. I’ve been happy for a while. I’ve been a gamer for a long time, and BioShock is definitely my top franchise, so I’m pretty psyched. I really enjoyed making it. I put a lot of care into it. I’m glad people will get enjoyment out of it.”You can see a bit of Old Man Winter in action in the video above, and find more of Trinder’s design work on his site BioShock Infinite’s Burial at Sea: Episode One DLC doesn’t have a concrete release date yet but is due before the end of 2013. For much more, be sure to read our hands-on impressions along with more thoughts from Levine, Robertson and Burial at Sea lead level designer Andres Gonzalez. Look out for even more on Irrational’s return to Rapture on IGN later this week.

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following @garfep on Twitter or garfep on IGN.