The Gnomon Workshop

Environmental Storytelling

Composition and Shape Language with Eddie Bennun


In this title, Art Director Eddie Bennun shares his workflow for designing a credible game environment that portrays a clear story. Using Google SketchUp and Adobe Photoshop, Eddie explores the importance of shape language and its crucial role in creating a narrative composition. As the image evolves from big shapes and silhouettes to small storytelling details, a variety of tools, techniques and strategies are explained to assist the student's understanding of Eddie's professional process. Topics include how to keep consistency between foreground and background, creating a sense of depth and distance, choosing proper camera angles, photo textures and credibility, and attracting the viewer's curiosity. For those developing their environment design skills, this title provides a valuable lesson on how to take the efficiency of 3D layout into presentation ready illustration using 2D paintover techniques.

Duration: 166 Minutes

Format: HD 1920x1080

Eddie Bennun

Art Director, Senior Concept Artist and Illustrator

Eddie Bennun is an art director and senior concept artist with a Master's degree in Direction for Animated Movies, and over 15 years of experience working in the game industry. In the early part of his career, Eddie taught art classes and worked on a variety of projects as a 2D animator, illustrator and painter. His first job in the game industry was at Gameloft, and a year later he joined Ubisoft Sofia, where he has been for the last twelve years. He began by working on small projects such as CSI, Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X 2, Rayman Raving Rabbits, and Prince of Persia Trilogy HD, to name a few. In 2009, after gaining a lot of experience and expertise making games for a variety of platforms and in different genres, he started working on one of the biggest Ubisoft franchises: Assassin's Creed. He is currently working on two AAA game projects of Ubisoft - Tom Clancy's The Division 2 and Skull & Bones, plus one more title, yet unannounced. He also gives art lectures at several academies and universities and continues to work on personal projects.