Batman - Arkham Asylum

I think that this was my favourite game of 2009. The game was more or less perfect in every way.

This image shows the process of creating the very comic-book/graphic novel art style. I love how they've kept this element in the game - it's really like they've brought the comic book world to 3D life.

The character designs have been kept quite true to the style of those in the old Batman comics/graphic novels. This black and white painting is a really good starting point when beginning to explore a character - you don't have to worry so much on colours and can therefore complete very quickly.

...and then eventually you can put in the extra effort to create beautifully detailed coloured paintings.

Again, these concept character explorations are more in the old comic-book style with very simple painting style which still works well and can still show a lot of detail.

A lot of time and attention was put into the character design of this game. Since all the characters have been designed and redesigned again and again, they all have a more or less accepted "look" and all have a very rich and important history, so a lot of care had to be taken with the designs for this game.

This is the concept art for the villain character Bane.

One of this game's strongest points would have to the the 3D character models. When comparing the models to the 2D concept art pieces, you can really see why the concept art is such an important part of the whole design process, and it is wonderful to see these sketches come to "life"

This game had the most beautiful and most detailed character models I've ever seen. There was such an attention to detail - even things like veins were included.

This is the concept art for one of my favourite characters - Harley Quinn, the Joker's sidekick.

Again one can see how artists and designers transform relatively simple 2D images into absolutely stunning 3D models.

The Joker was the main villain in the game, so his design had to be absolutely perfect.

I love the attention to detail here - the 'defining' features of the Joker have been explored very well here - the face, the hand etc.

Killer Croc's character was definitely one of the most impressive of the game.

His 3D model was by far the best too - every scale on his body was defined with amazing attention to detail.

Poison Ivy was another brilliant character

I love these concept drawings for the scarecrow character. He was definitely one of the creepiest characters in the game and I think that this was really shown in his design.