"Shredder" | Hunt: Showdown 1986 | Concept Design

Concept design for the Shredder for Crytek's Hunt: Showdown 1986 Post Malone's Murder Circus.

In the beginning it was a Crossbow that shoots Sawblades.

But then! .... Reloading, semi-automatic, magazine with multiple blades, multiple ammo types, winding handle and accelerating transmission, a way to transmit the spinning motion to the disc from the body, keep the discs visible to identify different ammo types, being able to return the blade back into the magazine to swap ammo mid use and more...

The biggest challenge was, as always with such complex mechanisms - where to even start?
So many elements and components are interconnected, overlapping, and depend on each-other.
Obviously, it has to start somewhere, and probably with the blade somehow, but how?

This was the most crucial point in the thought process and to start from - the sawblade had to be somehow mounted/suspended in order to be manipulated attached, moved and to meet all the requirements, the blade is the one thing that every other function "meets" at.
So, the cage/harness structure solution came to be from that realization, then the curved return arms, which powered by central gear/winding spring system, which is where the winding handle would then be placed, and from there everything else started making sense and falling into place more or less, one after the other.

3D really helped for testing all components volume size, movements and intersections in this case. Often, shaping certain solution one way, then animate it into another position and then you see what is wrong with it along the path of its movement, so you adjust or rethink the entire approach, come back, check first person view - very important to see what player will see.

Initially the bow was flexible and worked like a bow, but then I switched it to a spring system that technically turned it into a harpoon, but shaped as a crossbow in order to keep that heavy front rail feel more brutal and massive and the mechanism even more under tension.

Later iterations of the design and problem solving continued in a close collaboration with Alexander Sheynin.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8BOLvw

Art Director: Marcel Schaika