One of the most recognisable parts of the Total War: WARHAMMER games is their truly magnificent monsters.

We chatted with Baj Singh, lead character artist for Total War: WARHAMMER at Creative Assembly, about how he got into art in the video games industry, working with Games Workshop to create a creature from the concept art up, and the ingredients for making a really messed up monster.

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CA: First of all, could you please introduce yourself?

Baj Singh: I’m Baj Singh and I’m the lead character artist on the Total War: WARHAMMER franchise.

CA: How did you first get into gaming?

Baj Singh: My first platform was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and the first ever video game I played was Bubble Bobble. Back then, you had to connect a cassette player to the system in order to load up tapes. After that, I got a Super Nintendo (SNES) with a copy of Super Mario World and I never looked back!

CA: And how did you first get into art?

Baj Singh: I didn’t actually get into art until I was in my early twenties. Initially I did a degree in software engineering, but then realised that it just wasn’t for me – so I decided to give art a go and I stuck with it ever since.

CA: How did you get into the video games industry? How did you career start?

Baj Singh: I started back in 2008 at a company called Jagex working on a sci-fi game called Stellar Dawn. Unfortunately, after working on this for a few years it was cancelled, and then I worked on another long running project called Runescape. After five years there, I joined Creative Assembly in 2013 to work on the Total War Battles franchise before joining the WARHAMMER team a year later.

CA: What does a typical workday look like for you?

Baj Singh: As a lead, a lot of my day involves managing and art directing the 2D and 3D character teams. It does involve me jumping around quite a lot, checking emails, and going to meetings while providing feedback to my team and delegating some of the responsibilities that I just don’t have time for – I only have one pair of hands.

CA: How is working on a Total War game different than other games?

Baj Singh: From a character art point of view, I would say there are many more similarities as a lot of the processes are ubiquitous across the industry. Major differences would perhaps be the team dynamic and how we shift from project to project. A lot of teams will generally stop working for some time between projects while the next one is being decided. However, we generally organise our projects in advance (and have a number of them in production at any one time) so team members can “relay” between projects swiftly and efficiently.

CA: What unique challenges does working on Total War: WARHAMMER II specifically present?

Baj Singh: One of the major things we have to consider is the fidelity of our characters. Not only are our characters seen at a distance within the battles but they can also be seen close up in cinematic trailers and screenshots. We have to ensure that there is enough detail in our characters so they look impressive close up while also readable against the environment at great distances.

CA: What is the Necrofex Colossus in a nutshell?

Baj Singh: The Necrofex Colossus is basically the remains of dozens of shipwrecks, resurrected along with hundreds of headless corpses (which are also woven into the design).

CA: The Necrofex Colossus doesn’t have an official miniature – how does this alter the design process when compared with units that do?

Baj Singh: So whenever a miniature doesn’t exist, we collaborate between the Total War in-house artists and Games Workshop to come up with a design that satisfies the lore that they have outlined. This usually involves a thumbnail design from us (a rudimentary sketch that outlines the proportions and silhouette of the character/creature). Once that is approved, we create a much more fleshed out design (a concept) that highlights the major features in more detail.

CA: What sort of things do you have to consider when bringing a new unit to life?

Baj Singh: So apart from ensuring that we respect the lore that’s outlined by Games Workshop, we also have to work with other teams within the department (in particular the animation team who take ownership over the asset once the artist has finished creating it). They really want to bring the characters to life within the game with bespoke and exciting animations, so they may request features on the model that they have more control over (in the case of the Necrofex Colossus, rotation on the cannon arm and skeletons that can swing from the masts).

CA: What were the unique challenges of creating the Necrofex Colossus?

Baj Singh: Primarily the scale and detail of the creature. I think we severely underestimated how much detail we would need to add to this character in order to make it stand out at its size in game. We also had to figure out how this creature would move, especially around its joints – so for areas such as elbows and knees do we link the joints together with ropes or do we have a hinge joint that is strategically placed for animation reasons (but not made completely obvious at first glance).

Generally on our characters, we make the skeleton (the skeleton is literally an animation skeleton that we use to move and pose the character) symmetrical to make it easier for the animators to repurpose certain animations for similarly sized units. In this case, though, we wanted one of the legs to be slightly shorter than the other one so we could really get a unique walk and animation set that stood out from everything else.

CA: Can you describe the process of making the Necrofex Colossus step by step?

Baj Singh: Yep! So I’ll try to keep this fairly general as it can get quite complicated: