Making of Gargoyles: an interview with the creators of the game

At the end of 1995, a very unusual Disney game was released on Genesis, which by all means concealed its relationship to the famous studio. It was surprisingly dark, contained some rather frightening imagery and violence, but among other things, it became one of the most technically advanced games of its time, pushing the console's capabilities to the limit. Thanks to the newly-minted Disney Interactive studio, gamers got another 'terror that flaps in the night', but this hero was truly ahead of his time.

My name is Max Nasikan. These interviews with ten team members were a logical continuation of my interviews with the creators of Maui Mallard, Gargoyles' sister project, which was created in parallel. Unlike Goliath, who can wait a thousand years, my patience lasted only a quarter of a century. And today the stone cocoon will finally fall from the mysterious history of the creation of this game.

Русский перевод (Russian translation) интервью доступен здесь

СONTENTS

Producers

• Patrick Gilmore
• David Bergantino

Artists

• Thom Ang
• Thomas Breeden
• Kurt Dumas

Animators

• Ed Trillo
• Dean Wellins (Renegade Animation)

Music and sounds

• Patrick Collins

Programming

• Chris Shrigley

Level Design

• Joel Goodsell

Producers

Patrick Gilmore

senior producer

Hi, Patrick. Glad to speak with you again after our interview about Maui Mallard. How did you find yourself in this project and what exactly did you do?

Hi Max. I was Disney's producer on Gargoyles. In the Interactive Division, we were part of Consumer Products and often got to hear about new Disney properties well in advance of their public announcements. I was meeting with Disney TV Animation execs regarding Darkwing Duck (and, in particular, Whiffle Boy, the little-known video game series which is part of the fictional universe of Darkwing). At the meeting, I got to see a very early pitch of Gargoyles and thought it had a ton of promise as a game that combined platforming, combat, and limited flight.

Was the proposal to create a game based on the upcoming series your initiative, or was it suggested to you by someone from Disney TV Animation execs at that meeting?

I was having regular meetings with Disney TV Animation at the time. The Disney series in syndication were typically produced and grew an audience long before development of a game could begin. On the game side, we always felt like we were trailing the main creative thrust of a property, and we were keen to come in at an earlier stage, where we could participate more in the development of the story.

With my managers, I was excited about the idea of creating a game concurrently with a new series, so that the game felt more like a companion, rather than a by-product of the source material.

All present knew that when the TV people and game people get together, everyone would be looking for a project to do, so while I first proposed the idea of doing the game, it was really born out of those group meetings oriented to finding something to work on together. As the project took shape, it also represented the creative opportunity we had hoped for, since the Gargoyles game is part origin story for Goliath, dealing with aspects of the mythology not specifically covered in the series.

Obviously, Gargoyles was made by Disney Interactive, but there is not a single mention of Disney anywhere in the game. Were there any concerns that such a dark game would harm the company's reputation?

At the time, across Disney, there was a strong desire to expand outward from core animated content. Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures kind of set the pattern for more mature fare produced within Disney. We wanted to follow suit in games. Gargoyles was oriented toward the core gamer market of the time, so moved away from the bright, colorful palettes of some animated fare.

As it seemed to me, the game turned out to be much gloomily the animated series itself. Did you focus on something other than the original source?

"Gloomy" was definitely not the adjective we were going for! There were a lot of conversations about the darker tone of the game, but the team's vision was consistent that we wanted 1) a more dimensional and realistic game, with 2) respect for the animated series, but also for the myths that inspired it. Remember that this was a TV Animation property, without some of the restrictions that often came with a big feature tentpole. It came with a little more freedom, and the team responded with a strong desire not just to build on the creative equity of the show, but to expand and add dimension and realism to it.

I think you see that emphasis on realism in the moody palette and a stylish/edgy artistic experience. Thom Ang, the lead artist, is really gifted at rendering, shading, and anatomy. You see some of that influence in the design of enemy characters, which are generally human-proportioned, without the exaggerated features you often see in cartoons. Along with the 3D creatures that come later in the game, I know Thom also wanted a landscape that felt as dimensional as possible--moving in and out of shattered towers with exposed cross-sections in the opening level, for example. Later in the game, you see backgrounds with an artistic vanishing point (three dimensions, rather than the flat, scrolling "cards" of many games of the time), as well as some background shearing and other more advanced programming techniques that Chris got in there.

Thom was also very plugged into the mythological aspects of the game (the "Eye of Odin" illustration that starts the game is his, and the dual raven design for the gem feels highly authentic, almost like the tactile design for a live-action movie prop). Here you see a desire to dig deeper than the TV series, to get more at the original mythology and ancient origins of the gargoyles. This drive to dig into original mythology was part of a larger, industry-wide emergence of games as an art form. It was said on the team that we didn't want to make a game that felt like it existed strictly within the boundaries of the TV show. Instead, we wanted it to feel like both the game and the show were inspired by the same "real" source material.

I have to say that, looking back, I have nothing but admiration for the team's commitment to their vision. Gargoyles took a lot of creative risks, but it is internally highly consistent — something that's impossible to achieve unless everyone is on board. All of it was driven by a motivation to treat Goliath as a real, ancient character with timeless and mythological roots. To some degree, this got translated to what you might call a somber tone, but I think it was really motivated by respect for and commitment to the character of Goliath, and to the horror/gothic origins of gargoyle mythology in general.

Was the dark tone of this game influenced by the Batman animated series or the Batman games?

The team was influenced by Anton Furst's production design for Tim Burton's Batman, so trying to deliver something that felt edgy and artistically stylish.

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Was Buena Vista Interactive, which is a publisher of the game, created specifically for the release of Gargoyles?

I honestly don't remember, although similar to the film division, there was a lot of discussion about branding/labels which could signal the maturity level of the content, similar to Touchstone vs. Disney films. Gargoyles was part of those conversations for sure, but the criteria for forming the label were much more expansive than just a single game.

The game can be called brutal by Disney standards. In particular, there are killings of people, including Valkyrie women. The corpses of the dead remain to lie on the ground, which was never in the Disney games. In the platformers of those years (Aladdin, Earthworm Jim) they used the so-called Cartoon Violence when the figure of the enemy disappears in the cloud of smoke and the like. Did your team deliberately abandon this technique of bypassing violence?

I can say we didn't make any decision around the depiction of violence of any kind without a lot of discussions. In the end, we settled on the approach we took because it felt authentic to the franchise — the "magic" of something disappearing in a puff of smoke felt out of place in ways it didn't in games like Aladdin or Earthworm Jim. We actually felt that by making enemies disappear, we were confirming that they were dead, and it felt more violent as a result. By leaving the enemies onscreen, we felt they were plausibly knocked out, and could return to consciousness and combat in short order.

The game was very difficult. In the last level (The Forge), the difficulty is simply overwhelming. I must confess, this is the only Disney game on the segue, in which I played hard and for a long time, but could not go through the very end. It did not seem to you that the difficulty plank was raised too high?

It was difficult! Again, we envisioned our audience as a little more hard-core. We felt the game was in good company alongside other difficult/core games of the time, like Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts. This was uncharacteristic of Disney at the time but in keeping with a strategy to broaden our reach, and develop content for more age ranges.

The release of Gargoyles was also scheduled for SNES. This was even told in printed advertisements in the gaming press. What prevented this release?

I honestly don't remember. I remember Pete Fokos, the SNES developer, and recall some challenging issues with that version. We had another engineer Joe Sengir, who joined to help get it across the finish line.

As it turned out, Gargoyles game was not released in Europe and PAL ROM simply does not exist. In addition to the US, the game was released officially only in Brazil at the end of 1996 (although I played in its pirate version in Russia a year later). Ignoring the European Mega Drive market is an extremely strange commercial decision. Especially considering the game's outstanding quality and European scene-based mythology. Do you know why the PAL version was not done? Has it been canceled?

The Genesis version had Sega US as a publishing partner. I am not sure whether the Gargoyles TV show had even been syndicated in other territories yet, so it's quite possible the property was not well known at the time outside of the US (which, in turn, drove challenges in finding a publishing partner outside of the US).

Do you still have any graphics for this game? Concepts, arts, sprites, level draft maps, whatever …

I know I have an amazing framed painting of Goliath done by Thom Ang, but I don't think I have any other art from the game.

Cool! This art was used in the game menu and in the splash screen of the third level.

Exactly.

Do you remember any interesting or funny stories that happened when working on the game?

Don't know if this qualifies, but here goes! Disney Consumer products had an all-hands where we were revealing the game for the first time. As I said, we had taken a lot of creative risks, including expanding the mythology of the show's characters and introducing CG animation, which was very new at the time. There was a lot of trepidation around the reveal; we felt like we had to "sell" the vision.

Rather than give the normal, earnest product pitch which was typical of all-hands meetings, we went WAY out on a limb. Ed Trillo, the artist who created the 3D characters in the game, created a high-resolution render of the mechanical Goliath soaring to a building top, with the narration that "Goliath will meet his most deadly foe." Everyone was knocked out by the animation, and thought the CG gargoyle was the foe in question, but the character soared to the top of a building where it encountered a raging, ape-like, King Kong with the head of Bo Boyd, Disney's chairman of consumer products. We thought the joke might get us to shut down, but the audience — including Bo, who was later recognized as a legitimate Disney legend — completely howled in laughter. It was a big risk to showcase the game that way, but brought a lot of recognition to the team's cutting-edge efforts, and played perfectly into Bo's legendary good humor.

Thanks for the detailed story, Patrick.

You are welcome, Max!

David Bergantino

assistant producer

Hi David. Glad to speak with you again after our interview about Maui Mallard. As far as I know, the Maui and Gargoyles teams worked side by side.

Hi Max. Yes, these were parallel productions. Gargoyles was a great game but, from my perspective, far less storied, as it ended up being released on schedule, I believe, and no sequel was ever planned or put into motion. Most of the good stuff around Maui involves the sequel, travel to England, and all the ancillary stuff we were trying to drum up around Maui. Gargoyles never saw that kind of action because it was solidly based on a well-defined IP.

The rest of the team told me quite a lot. But I can probably learn something new from you.

I will be happy to answer any questions that I can, but per the above and my role, I’ll be able to provide even less insight. I can tell you four distinct things I remember from that production:

1) I came up with a “fire worm” creature for a particular section of the game that involved a ceiling crawl. Everyone seemed to like it but never made it into the game.

2) The programmer put in an Easter egg with his name and some funny info that I stumbled upon and I was tasked with telling him to remove it. He refused, mostly because I couldn’t make him, and as a non-programmer, neither I nor anyone else, could remove it themselves. I thought it was kind of cool actually, so I didn’t press so hard; the company was worried about being sued if players stumbled upon it like I did. Nothing like that ever happened.

I believe it’s one of those that pops up with a certain button combination and I accidentally triggered it. I believe it had the programmer’s name, some animated digital fireworks, some shout-outs to family and friends and perhaps an obscenity or two (nothing mean, just for emphasis like “F*ck yeah!”) and that’s what Disney was really afraid of.

Since I stumbled onto it accidentally, I never knew the combination. If anything, since he wouldn’t remove it, Chris Shrigley may have gone back and changed the combination to make accidental discovery more difficult.

3) From what I recall, we ran out of time in production and the end of the game was replaced what was supposed to be a bunch of gameplay with essentially a slide show composed of the storyboards for that level to resolve the story. I wrote that section.

4) I wrote the Strategy Guide for the BradyGames since I had come up with a bunch of tips and tricks in the course of play-testing the game and since Disney hired me because I was a writer, they wanted to put that skill to good use.

Those are my recollections of the game. I have little to do with any other aspect of it and it was a more self-contained project.

Thanks, David.

It's my pleasure, Max.

Artists

Thom Ang

lead artist

Hi Thom. Nice to meet you. How did you find yourself in this project and what exactly did you do?

Hi Max. I joined Walt Disney Computer software as a contractor. My first tasks were to do sprite clean-up on Maui Mallard and Gargoyles (the show had not been released yet at that time). As both projects ramped up I became more involved in providing concept art for story and gameplay. Eventually, I was offered a full-time position. It was a really small group, but as our needs increased, I helped recruit my fellow graduates from Art Center College of Design onto the team. We all worked up concepts and designs. At some point, our small band of artists became assigned to either Maui Mallard or Gargoyles. By tone and interest, most everyone gravitated to Maui Mallard. I was the resident Goth and moody artist-in-black with a penchant for graphic novels and Batman comic books.

Gargoyles was a perfect fit for me. With most of the original roster of artists shifting to Maui Mallard, it was time to bring in the next wave of incredible artists (Kurt Dumas, Thomas Breeden, Roddy Navarro, Katherine Adams, Tom Barlow, Brent Whittington, Ed Trillo, Brian Horton, Oliver Wade and I know I'm forgetting too many names). John Fiorito, who formed the art department, was leading both Maui Mallard and Gargoyles. As the two projects ramped up and his attention and interest favored Maui Mallard, he asked if I was interested in leading the Gargoyles art team. This being my first real production job, I didn't know a thing about leading a team. But I knew I had a passion for the Gargoyles property, and I had a great team to work with. So I said "yes". I focussed on character designs and animation, story development, and visual R&D. Kurt Dumas handled overall background development, and individual artists fleshed out setting and props for game levels.

It is obvious that Gargoyles was made by Disney Interactive, but no references to Disney are mentioned anywhere in the game. Were there any concerns that such a dark game would harm the company's reputation?

I can't recall why the company chose to release under Buena Vista Interactive instead of Disney Interactive. Perhaps it was too dark of a brand to roll out under the Disney Interactive banner.

The game can be called brutal by Disney standards. In particular, there are killings of people, including Valkyrie women. The corpses of the dead remain to lie on the ground, which was never in the Disney games. In the platformers of those years (Aladdin, Earthworm Jim) they used the so-called Cartoon Violence when the figure of the enemy disappears in the cloud of smoke and the like. Did your team intentionally refrain from this kind of circumvention of violence?

Perhaps my dark, "doom and gloom" sensibilities influenced that particular direction. I recall a particular VP labeling me as "edgy". But thinking back on it, I was trying to honor the tone and seriousness of the source material. I probably was trying to push the boundary for Disney Interactive. Maybe all that resulted in the Buena Vista Interactive release.

The game was very difficult. At the last level in the steel plant, the difficulty is off the charts. It did not seem to you that the difficulty plank was raised too high?

I'm not a particularly strong gamer. So I would agree the difficulty was hard. I couldn't defeat the level. But you can credit Joel Goodsell and Thomas Fessler for that. The Forge with all the various bosses is my favorite setting that I concepted. So, I think it's appropriate to keep a player in there for an eternity.

The release of Gargoyles was also scheduled for SNES. This was even told in printed advertisements in the gaming press. What prevented this release?

I don't recall all the reasons for this. SNES had some interesting differences to the Sega Genesis graphically. More colors or resolution if memory serves. My team had put so much love and effort into the SNES. It was a letdown for us.

In addition to Creative Capers, another animation studio called Renegade Animation was working on the game. Why did you need to involve another studio besides CC, if all the 3D animation was done in-house?

With many productions, the unmovable is the release date. We had so many animations to get through that neither our internal team nor Creative Capers could do it all and still hit the release date. CC handled most of all the hand-drawn frames which then needed to be scanned and color filled before being sized down to target resolution. So Renegade was brought in to get us through the volume of that process. Of course, after all that, all the animation, whether hand-drawn or 3D had to go through pixel clean-up which we handled internally.

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Joel Goodsell told me you had a kind of 'visual bible for Gargoyles'. What exactly was that?

I drew the turnarounds and all the key poses (start pose, end pose, some in-between) for Goliath's and (most of) Demona's animation. Those were all in the bible. All our concept art and every character design were in there too, along with reference images.

In the animated series, Goliath has light purple skin. And in the game, it is completely gray. What was the reason for such a deviation from the original color scheme of the character?

Regarding Goliath's palette design, it changes based on the specific environment lighting scheme. We started from a base color that had some of the lavender hue established by the animated series' style guide, but because I was incorporating limited gradients to get a more modeled form, and the aforementioned environmental lighting scheme per-level, the original hue receded back as an accent rather than a dominant constant.

As far as I know, the sepia drawings for the first screen (the Viking with the Eye of Odin) and the defeated Goliath (the Game Over screen) were made by you. Who drew the color drawings that were used in the cutscenes between levels?

I had a great comic book artist, Matt Smith, working with me on the composition of the cut scenes. Afterward, I did all the final digital rendering.

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I still haven't watched the show itself, so I only recently found out that the Eye of Odin was also present there. But it looked more like an Egyptian than a Scandinavian artifact.

According to the information on this wiki, it appeared in an episode called The Edge, which first aired on January 13th, 1995, when game development was in full swing. Do you remember where the idea for the Eye of Odin came from? And who came up with the idea of making it in the game as an interweaving of two ravens' bodies?

We previewed much of our development with Disney TV Animation. They had packets of our artwork and story synopsis. They were interested in our "Eye of Odin" Macguffin and informed us that they would develop their own storyline based on the artifact. They most definitely had the concept art for the "Eye of Odin" that I created. But though they provided us with references from their production design, they did not specifically consult with us on the visual design of their "Eye of Odin". I thought the series itself was great. And I was happy that they tied in somewhat to the Eye from our storyline.

But I think they missed the mythological point of the Eye as I designed it. Odin's ravens, Huginn and Muninn were his eyes (and ears) out in the world. Having them encircling the gem created a perfect "eye" shape and it fit the myth.

As it seemed to me, the game turned out to be much gloomily the animated series itself. Did you really focus on something else, except for the original source? Was the dark tone of this game influenced by the Batman animated series or the Batman games?

As I described, I was the "gloom and doom", "edgy" artist. I was influenced by painted graphic novels from that era from artists like Bill Sienkiewicz, Dave McKean, Kent Williams, Jon J Muth, and George Pratt, as well as darker comic books like Mike Mignola's Hellboy, David Mazzucchelli's visuals on Batman: Year One and of course, Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns. We had access to some production artwork and scripts from the Gargoyles animated series. But we hadn't seen any completed episodes until we were deep into our own production. So I kind of made it my own. Having since worked on enforcing brand for THQ corporate on licenses for Pixar, Nickelodeon, and HBO, the older me probably would have hammered younger me to stick closer to the animated series. But I was young, brash, and arrogant back then, and I was trying to make my mark.

Do you still have any graphics for this game? Concepts, arts, sprites, level draft maps, whatever...

Most all the material I may have is lost somewhere in unpacked moving boxes from my 5 moves since working on Gargoyles. But I do have the following:

1) Production Team t-shirt: my artwork, heavily influenced by Mike Mignola

2) Point-of-sale material: cover composition (the one used for the game cover) is mine, re-rendered by Disney Creative Services.

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3) Sketch for a possible painting inspired by Goliath and Demona but definitely way off-brand. This one is more in the vein of my personal art style.

Were there any ideas or whole levels that were not included in the game? If so, what caused them to be excluded: deadline, memory limitation, or something else?

There was a certain elevator gag we wanted to put in as maybe a secret triggered alternate mini-level. I think the idea came from Michael Giacchino who was Assistant Producer and Composer on Gargoyles (before his Academy Award-winning fame). We wanted Goliath, our winged, and flight-capable gargoyle hero to have to take an elevator in the heart of Xanatos' skyscraper lair. The moment the elevator doors closed we would play muzak - I think it was The Girl From Ipanema while Goliath fended off a gauntlet of robots in a tight, enclosed space. Probably a licensing issue that made us abandon it. That moment of levity certainly wouldn't have come from yours truly.

Do you remember any interesting or funny stories that happened when working on the game?

The production and the team were top-notch. I'm quite sentimental about the camaraderie of the people involved. I do cherish a personal experience (among many great experiences on the project). I was developing visual designs for the Viking lore. At the time, most of my Viking knowledge came from Marvel Comic's The Mighty Thor, particularly, the great Walt Simonson's run as writer and artist. I had a chance to meet with Walt unrelated to the Gargoyles production. I told him what I was working on and asked him what inspired his Thor stories, what research did he delve into for the Viking lore. He walks into his studio and pulls a book from his library. He says everything he knew about Vikings came from this one book. Then he gives me the book. I was really touched by this.

Do you remember the name of this book? Did you still have it?

I really tried to find the book. I searched thru multiple boxes in my garage. No luck. And I don't know the specific book title. I even searched the internet for a match on the cover.

I managed to get a response from Walter Simonson via Facebook. Here's what he replied: "I'm not sure what the book is. If it's all about Vikings in general, then I'm at a loss. If it's about mythology, The Norse Myths by Kevin Crossley-Holland might be it. Sorry, I can't help any more than that."

I found on the Internet several covers of this book from different editions and years. Among the 9 covers presented here, do you recognize your book?

I am impressed at how thorough you are. I recall the books to be about Vikings in general. At the very least, none of the books covers to the Kevin Crossley-Holland book match my memory of the book cover on what Walt gave me.

Anyway, thanks a lot for this interview, Thom!

Good luck on the article. I enjoyed my trip down memory lane for my first professional game title.

Thomas Breeden

background artist

Hi Thomas. How did you find yourself in this project and what exactly did you do?

Hi Max. I was about to graduate with a degree in Illustration from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Thom Ang, the lead artist, came to the school to review portfolios and interview graduating students for potential jobs at Disney Interactive. He later told me that the piece in my portfolio that got me the job was a surrealistic rendering of four dismembered and tattooed arms that look like they’re still alive. One is pulling back a red curtain.

I think they hired four of us from my graduating class. We all started out doing concept sketches while the team tried to figure out what each level might look like and what sort of gameplay might happen in each level. Then each artist was assigned a level to start building.

Did you draw the final look of the level maps, which were then cut into tiles?

I remember working with a designer and sketching things out on graph paper. You had a limited number of colors and you had a limited number of 16x16 pixel tiles that you could use to create a level. You could rotate or flip tiles, so the limitations created an interesting puzzle to figure out. I remember using a lot of black, so all the tiles could be used together.

What levels did you work on?

I worked on Level 3, the City Rooftops. The background had two or three layers of the building that would parallax at different rates to give a sense of depth. I also worked on a penthouse atrium level that was cut early in production for reasons of game scope.

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The game can be called brutal by Disney standards. In particular, the background and scenery of the second level (Siege of the Rookery) look pretty hellish. Did you have any concerns that this is too much for a video game made for Disney's IP?

We were all new to Disney and to video game development and just wanted to make a really cool-looking game. The lead artist and producers were driving forces of the direction and look of the game. The Gargoyles cartoon was definitely geared towards an older, more teenage audience.

The game was very difficult. At the last level in the steel plant, the difficulty is off the charts. It did not seem to you that the difficulty plank was raised too high?

There were some parts that were very difficult, The Forge especially. It’s been too long for me to judge whether the difficulty was too high. Perhaps, it’s what builds character and perseverance.

Do you still have any graphics for this game? Concepts, arts, sprites, level draft maps, whatever...

Any digital images I would have kept are probably on a long-lost Syquest disk somewhere.

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I have some color copies from some game magazines from 1996 and I have a dozen or so concept images that I can forward to you. Here’s are the scans of the concept art I worked on. Some for the Rooftops, the Atrium, and the Rookery.

Among the scans you sent, I saw your concepts for Level 2 (Rookery). As I understand it, you did not work on the final look for this level. Do you remember which of the artists on your team worked on it?

I did not work on the Rookery. I think Jody McMurrian worked on the first level (Castle Siege). The other environment artists were Roddy Navarro, Tom Barlow, Hugh Jamieson, Katie Adams. Not sure who worked on the Rookery.

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Was there any work done beyond the concepts themselves for the canceled level in the Atrium? Have you managed to create any final backgrounds for it?

The atrium only went to blockout phase (squares and triangle). You could climb around on the towers.

Half of your concept arts are drawn in blue pencil. All of Kurt Dumas' concepts for Maui Mallard were also painted in blue. What is special about choosing this particular color? This is curious.

I think the blue pencils were an animation thing. When I got to Disney, there was a cabinet of art supplies filled with paper and light blue and dark blue Col-erase pencils. The light blue wouldn’t show up on copies, so you used those for the rough under-drawing. Then you would draw over that with the darker blue pencil. They had a nice softness, without breaking, so they created nice lines. Now I use sepia and black ones when I sketch sometimes.

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Do you remember any interesting or funny stories that happened when working on the game?

When we first started working there, space was tight and we had two people sharing a cubicle. You both couldn’t stand up at the same time, because the chairs would block each other. The animation team was grouped into a corner office and every once in a while, they would start barking like different-sized dogs. It sounded like a real dog kennel.

Is there anything you've created in this game that you're especially pleased with or proud of? If so, what exactly was it?

Nothing in particular. It was a great first project and when I encounter someone who remembers playing the game, they always have positive things to say about it.

How do you currently assess your work on this project? Would you like to change something in this game now, if you had the opportunity? Is it one of your favorites in your portfolio?

I don’t think I would change anything. It’s a great game considering the limitations at the time and was well received. It’s on my resume, but I no longer have any really good images of the work I did to include in my portfolio. I worked with some really great people on this project and I’m still friends with most of them 25 years later.

Thanks a lot, Thomas!

Kurt Dumas

additional art and animation

Hi again Kurt. How did you find yourself in this project and what exactly did you do?

Hi Max. I was hired within months of graduating from Art Center College of Design by Disney Interactive which had just started staffing the company with artists. Previous games had been outsourced to other animation and art production companies. In the beginning, there weren’t many artists, about a dozen or so. We were tasked with developing the look of the first games to be produced in-house: Maui Mallard and Gargoyles. We did it all, everything from concept artwork and gaming ideas to cleaning up of sprites pixel by pixel.

As the company grew, positions got more specialized and I ended working in visual development primarily. There really wasn’t a specific vis dev position to begin with but in my spare time, I drew the blue line environments, and eventually, I was asked to continue with the technique as one of my primary responsibilities.

Did you draw the final look of the level maps, which were then cut into tiles? If so, what levels did you work on?

I drew concept work. Sometimes it was used as a direct reference for levels but I don’t remember how close the final look was to my drawings. I don’t remember all of what I worked on. We’d bounce around from level to level as needed.

As it seemed to me, the game turned out to be much gloomily the animated series itself. Do you really focus on something else, except for the original source?

I seem to recall we were influenced by comic art as much as anything else but we created a lot of the work from our own ideas and style.

Since you are an artist first and foremost, I would love to see your illustrations for this project. Do you still have any graphics for this game?

I think I have some copies but since Disney owns the copyright I’m not permitted to approve its use for publication.

Were there any ideas or whole levels that were not included in the game?

Lots, probably more than made it in.

All of your concepts for Maui Mallard (as for sure for Gargoyles) were also painted in blue. What is special about choosing this particular color?

They were drawn with Col-Erase (dark) blue pencils that were commonly used in animation. I drew on old school (not so old at the time) animation bond paper as well. I used Col-Erase a lot on my Disney Feature Animation Internship in Florida prior to graduating from Art Center and returned to those tools. It was my favorite medium as I got the best results.

Is there anything you've created in this game that you're especially pleased with or proud of? If so, what exactly was it? Was it especially difficult for you to do this?

I have no recollection of a favorite. I love drawing and that’s what I remember most.

How do you currently assess your work on this project? Would you like to change something in this game now, if you had the opportunity? Is it one of your favorites in your portfolio?

I have used the work in some of my older portfolios, but I no longer do much in the way of development art. Still, my knowledge of perspective and background design and composition is evident in the storyboards I draw currently. kurtdumas.com. - view the website with a desktop computer and not a handheld device like an iPhone or iPad… for some reason the PDFs don’t scroll properly.

Do you remember any interesting or funny stories that happened when working on the game?

You may have heard this from another artist but I have a friend who got hired for a short time, (he’s actually a brilliant and successful feature film story artist), but he didn’t fit into the production very well. He was fired shortly after and for a joke, he came back in for about a week dressed in a sport coat and tie and worked in the men’s restroom like an attendant at a fancy restaurant. It was hilarious. The Vice President didn’t think so.

It's funny. Thanks for your participation, Kurt.

It's my pleasure, Max.

Animators

Ed Trillo

3-D artist and 3-D animator

Hi Ed! How did you find yourself in this project and what exactly did you do?

Hi Max! I was a 22-year-old kid right out of my first industry job at Interplay Productions. I left to fulfill every kid’s dream of working for Disney and became the first 3D artist ever hired at Disney Interactive (we were still Buena Vista Software at the time I was hired). 3D was still a very new and experimental part of game development at the time and I remember carrying my huge PC tower with me to my interview to show off my work - remember this was before the days of CD burners!

I’ll never forget my first day. They gave me a huge corner office near the top floor of the Disney Channel building in Burbank. I was shown to my desk only to find a computer I had never seen or heard of before. My boss John Fiorito tells me it’s a Silicon Graphics machine that costs upwards of $120k with 3D software that I also had never heard of. Sitting on the desk was a huge user manual titled “Alias”. John told me to learn it and the rest is history.

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I assume you were one of the youngest members of the Gargoyles team (possibly the youngest). When did you gain experience in 3D animation by that time?

Most of the other artists there were fresh out of Cal Arts and Art Center so we were all around the same age. The 3D modeling experience I had was from my own personal portfolio I built during high school using pirated 3D software on my Commodore Amiga. I remember buying a photocopied book of the user manual from some guy in a trench coat for $20 like it was a drug deal.

Remember, during this time 3D animation wasn’t even a thing you could learn anywhere. It wasn’t a subject taught in art schools because the technology was still new. But being at Disney Interactive was the BEST boot camp anyone could have dreamed of because I learned to animate from our traditional cell animators. They taught me animation techniques like secondary motion, drag, weight, etc. that I applied to my 3D models.

Was the entire 3D animation for the game done by the three of you (you, J. P. Asperin and Spencer)? Was all 3D development done in-house?

I did most of the 3D animation which was still very much R&D at the time. Spencer Hale was hired later on as a 3D modeler. Everything was done in-house on Alias (version 4.0 I believe) and 3D Studio (before it evolved to 3DS Max). I don’t recall JP Asperin, he probably joined after I left which was after we launched Gargoyles.

What kind of robots did you work on in the game?

I worked primarily on the main evil Goliath robot but also created what I called the “Hoochiebot” as well as a lot of R&D work. Some of the work I did involve learning the newly created particle effects system to create realistic explosions that I believe made it into the game at some point.

I also tried to recreate Goliath in 3D in Nurbs with muscles that flexed when the elbows rotated a certain angle. This was when Alias first introduced an IK system to handle skeletons and joints.

Joel answered me: "We cut 4 robots - all at the design stage, but I think Ed had gotten started on the ED-Bot / TrilloBot modeling." In 2012, programmer Chris Shrigley posted on his website the source code of the game with all the sprites, including those cut from the game.

There were also some sprites of the TRILOBOT character, obviously named after you. Do you remember anything else about this robot and the three others that were not included in the game?

Wow, this brings back so many forgotten memories! I had to do some digging but that looks like a modified version of one of the robots I created:

You can’t tell from these rendered shots but when I modeled these robots I built every nut and bolt and made every surface airtight like an engineer would build it. I was very OCD about that. Obviously, these would never show up in a 64x64 pixel sprite, but it made for great PR. Our GM Marc Teren would bring visitors by to show off the 3D team and would tell them that “Ed builds these things like we’re going to send them to the Gulf War.”

What was the most difficult part of your work on this project? What kind of content missing from the final game do you regret most?

Maybe the toughest thing was most of my work never converted well to the in-game sprites, so a lot of the hard work I put in was lost in the pixel abyss. All the frames I rendered had to be cleaned up and basically re-drawn by our artists.

But perhaps my biggest regret is losing all the files and animation I created. There was so much more I worked on that I saved onto floppies that are lost forever. This was before the world had Google Drive and memory sticks.

I was very impressed with the prohibition signs and semaphores sprites that rush to Goliath from the train level. They move across the screen in perspective to the viewer. The team worked through even such trifles in detail. Were these elements originally created in 3D as well?

Those were some of our first 3D renders that actually converted well into sprites. Those were made by Spencer Hale who spent a lot of R&D time crafting rendering techniques that were highly optimized for sprite conversion. The models had to be made via large surfaces with minimal details because even things like bolts and grooves would often convert to noise when scaled down to sprites. I don't know many other companies that were doing similar techniques for their SNES and Genesis games back in 1994 so I wouldn't be surprised if we were among the first. I am 99% sure however we were the first using Silicon Graphics machines and Alias to render sprites for 16-bit consoles!

Did you complete the whole game? If not, do you remember your greatest achievement in it? Would you play it now?

Here’s something I’m both proud and embarrassed to admit: I have never ever in my 25+ year career played a game that I worked on after it launched. I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s because I play-test them so much during production that I no longer have the desire to. But once any of my games launched I’ve always quietly closed that door and looked ahead at the next thing.

Do you still have any graphics for this game? Concepts, arts, sprites, 3D models, whatever

Everything I could dig up can be found here!

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Most of the robots in the game have very lively plastic. They move more like animals than typical robots. One of their types is derived from the raptor. Did you study the behavior of certain animals when creating animations for such robots?

Actually yes, and it was perhaps the highlight of my career there. Our lead Thom Ang took me under his wing and would often talk me through everything from anatomy to advanced animation techniques. He would bring in books that had sequential frames of humans and animals doing various actions. We used those as inspiration and would brainstorm how mechanical versions would move like. It was an absolute dream as an artist/animator to be so free and encouraged to be creative and come up with cool shit.

Maybe this is unfair to say, but I feel like that sense of wonder and exploration is somewhat lost today because there are so many references available at your fingertips. You can literally look up anything on Netflix or search YouTube to copy frame-by-frame, which I know many people do. Back in 1994, we were all kind of running blind and only had our imagination to bring these creations to life, while today everything is masterfully motion-captured or pulled from a huge stock animation library that you polish and tweak. Also, get off my lawn!

The most impressive robot for me was Thundering Thor 3000. What was your inspiration for it?

That was not my model — that was made by Spencer Hale but if it’s any consolation I hired him and taught him everything he knows. Jokes aside, Spencer was an amazing artist who taught me one of the most important lessons in my career: to be professional and get shit done. I was young and a hot-shot so I spent a lot of time on unnecessary details that I knew would never convert into sprites, but were great for my portfolio!

If you compared the 3D models of Thundering Thor and my Armored Bot, mine was probably 20x in complexity and file size. Spencer on the other hand was very efficient and only modeled what was needed. That’s something I took with me throughout my career and something I teach to young artists.

Do you remember any interesting or funny stories that happened when working on the game?

Well, this is a bit of a touchy subject but every day at 5PM we would meet up in either John Fiorito’s office or our fledgling programmer Cary Hara’s cubicle to play Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine. I won every match I played so decisively that they’d get uncomfortably angry. Kurt Dumas once broke the controller in half, Joel Goodsell would “accidentally” unplug the power cord, things like that. So once in a while, I’d lose a game on purpose just to put them in a better mood. Don’t ask them about this though as it may open old wounds.

Patrick Gilmore also told me a funny story in which you created a high-resolution render of the mechanical Goliath soaring to a building top. Can you add any details to it?

This animation was by far the pinnacle of everything I did during my time at Disney Interactive. It was done in 3D Studio 4.0 (before it was 3DMax) practically frame-by-frame because the skeletal IK system had not been made yet. So you can imagine the challenge we had animating a full character by simply "parenting" each limb to each other since the skeletal IK system was not available in 3D Studio at that time. It was an amazing team effort and I took a lot of animation direction from our leads Thom Ang and Kurt Dumas. Unfortunately, that footage has been lost and is probably in a forgotten VHS tape or a floppy disk in someone's attic.

The idea for the King Kong head prank was all Patrick Gilmore and our management team. When I heard of the reception and laughter it got it was a very proud moment for me because everyone felt that animation was our best showcase of our team pushing the edge of what was being done at that time in the game industry.

Are you satisfied with the result of your work on the Gargoyles now? Is there anything that you would like to change from the height of a greater experience now?

There’s not a single thing I would change from that experience. When I was there building those robots I honestly felt like we were on top of the world with the most talented team on the planet. I owe a lot of who I am today from being part of that team, not only from the skills I learned but just from being a better human.

I still keep in touch with many of our alumni today and it’s amazing to see all their accomplishments over the decades. Many of them went on to make many of the legendary games people still play today. John Fiorito and Joel Goodsell for example are at Insomniac still “killing it” as the kids say. Others went on to make our favorite Pixar movies and won Oscars.

In closing, I’m always humbled when I look back and think of the collection of talent we had during that time. I’m still convinced we assembled the best team on the planet that was absolutely in a league of their own. I quit college because I felt it was delaying me from my dream of working in the game industry, so my 1.5 years at Disney was like obtaining the PhD in art and animation I never had the opportunity to pursue. It’s been a blast seeing the game industry’s evolution throughout the years, and I’m forever grateful to be part of one of its finest graduating classes.

Thanks a lot, Ed!

You're welcome, Max!

Dean Wellins

Lead Animator from Renegade Animation

Third-party studio Renegade Animation was brought in to create the game along with Creative Capers. I was able to interview the lead animator of the project, who was Dean.

Hi Dean! How did you find yourself in this project and what exactly did you do?

Hello Max. At the time, I was working freelance for Renegade Animation in Glendale. It was my actual animation job and was excited when Darrell Van Citters (the Director/Owner) wanted me to help out animating various actions for a new Gargoyles video game.

What character animations have you worked on? Did you work on the animations of Goliath? If so, do you remember exactly which Goliath movements you animated?

My recollection for Gargoyles, is doing various climbs, runs, flying moves, clawing swipes, and throws. All done on paper then scanned in and sent off for approval along with the 2D drawings.

It was definitely Goliath, but I couldn’t tell you which separate animations I worked on. It was a long time ago. Maybe if I saw them again, I could point them out? I remember crawls and swiping of claws. Maybe a jump up and jump down and land? I circled the ones that looked familiar. Such a long time ago. I’m not 100% sure but I did my best to remember.

You first joined Disney in August 2000 on Treasure Planet. And over the past 20+ years, you have worked on a dozen Disney feature films as an animator, story artist, and creative leadership.

Disney's name was not mentioned anywhere in the final Gargoyles game due to the too dark tone of the game and the company decided to release it under a subsidiary brand of Buena Vista Interactive. Did you know back in 1995 that you were creating all these gargoyle animations for the Disney project?

Yes. I feel like I was told at the time, it was a Disney project.

What was the most difficult part for you in working on these animations for the game?

At the time, I was very green and hadn’t done much human anatomy-type animation. I had mostly done pushed, cartoony characters. So it was very much a learning experience to get the muscle movements right. I don’t know who was overseeing the art on the Disney side, but I learned a lot from them about muscle groups and how they moved from the draw-overs they were doing over my work.

Are you satisfied with your work on that project now? Would you like to change anything in those animations if you had today's knowledge and experience at that time?

Oh, I’m sure I could improve upon whatever I was doing at the time. Like I said before, I was very green.

What was it like working for Renegade at the time? What did your experience in the company and on this game, in particular, give you?

It was my first assignment as a freelancer for Renegade, so Gargoyles was really a test for them to see what I could do. Ultimately, I ended getting hired by Renegade full-time. So I have to thank my Gargoyles work for affording me that opportunity. I loved working with Darrell and Ashley at Renedage and did so for several years after.

Do you have any graphics from this project?

I don’t have any artwork from Gargoyles, unfortunately.

Have you ever played this game? If so, what are your impressions? Would you play it now?

Never had a chance to play the game. I’d totally pay it now if I could.

Do you play video games now? If so, what are your favorites?

I don’t really play video games at all. My sons do.

The 16-bit format allowed home videogames to have cartoon quality animation for the first time. Around the mid-90s professional animators were enlisted to create games (Cool Spot, Aladdin, Earthworm Jim, etc.). Gargoyles was also fortunate enough to be one of the few games of the time with stunning hand-drawn animations. Are there any 16-bit games that really impressed you with animation?

I don’t remember too many. I loved the Monkey Island games from Lucas Arts. Very funny. Well written.

Have you ever had a desire to take part in the creation of any video game again? Technology has leaped forward since then, and some games are now on par with cartoons in animation quality and storytelling.

I’ve definitely proposed game ideas in the past, based on our films at Disney Animation, but to no avail.

In the mid-90s, Disney released a number of risky projects for a children's audience, which, in my opinion, would hardly have appeared in our time. For example, in the Runaway Brain short, the public's favorite Mickey Mouse became possessed by a monster. And in the 1995 game called Maui Mallard, Donald fought the dead and zombies with a gun (although it shot bugs, not bullets) and a ninja staff. Even in the Gargoyles game, the company decided not to put the Disney name in it, as I said earlier.

Don't you think that Disney projects (in particular, feature films) are avoiding these risks and such dark themes at the present time? Even Fox's The Pagemaster you worked on was scary enough for kids in some places. Do you regret this distancing of modern studios from the dark themes that were inherent in Gargoyles game and other animation projects of the 80s and 90s?

I’ve always held that youth today are savvier than we give them credit for. With social media and YouTube, I believe kids now have the emotional capacity to take on darker tones, themes, truths as well as more flawed characters in films. It’s been hard to push that forward in features, as there’s always trepidation on the studios' part to avoid making films too scary for kids. Animation still has a stigma as a little kids genre, rather than simply a medium to tell stories. I think kids like adults, want to be riveted, put on the edge of their seat. As long as it’s all resolved in a positive way in the end, why not ride the edge a bit?

Which of your projects are you most satisfied with? Which ones are you proud of as an animator?

I would say The Iron Giant at Warmer Bros always has a special place in my heart. It’s the film I really learned visual storytelling and at the same time, allowed me to spread my wings as an artist. And it’s just a charming, beautiful story that doesn’t talk down to kids. Raya and the Last Dragon is one I’m very proud of, not necessarily because of the story plot or filmmaking, but as a piece of representation to the amazing people of South East Asia. Having visited there several times, I wanted the SEA region in all its many colors and cultures, to be seen through that film. I think it was able to do that.

How does it feel to know that the projects you worked on a quarter of a century ago (and perhaps did not attach much importance to it then in the case of Gargoyles) are still highly regarded and have fans among the new generation?

It’s amazing. It just goes to show that being relentless in your commitment to quality, as well as putting passion into your work will always stand the test of time.

Thanks a lot, Dean!

Thanks for the opportunity, Max.

Music and sound

Unfortunately, despite all my efforts, I was not able to communicate with the game's composer Michael Giacchino. He is now a highly sought-after film composer and Oscar winner. However, the game's sound engineer, Patrick Collins, shared his memories.

Patrick Collins

sound designer and audio engineer

Hi, Patrick. Glad to talk to you again after our interview about Maui Mallard. How did you find yourself in this project and what exactly did you do?

Hi, Max. I will be glad to help again. While I was working on Maui Mallard, Bob Rademacher, the project manager for Gargoyles came into my office and asked if I could work on it. Similar to Maui, I composed the remaining music that Michael Giacchino had not completed and created all the sound effects for the game.

What stages of Gargoyles did you create tracks for after Michael left?

The title screen was a transcription I did based off of the Disney TV series. I composed the boss music, the subway music, the pre-level intro music, continue music, and of course, the secret techno music (C-A-L-L B-A-L-L). I think everything else was Michael's composition.

The game was very difficult. At the last level in the steel plant, the difficulty is off the charts. It did not seem to you that the difficulty plank was raised too high?

I don't remember playing the game to the end. I think I just had dev codes so I could skip to levels to test things out. I didn't have time to play the game much. Like I said before, I was working on Maui, Gargoyles, Pocahontas, and Toy Story pretty much simultaneously toward the end of 1995, so I had very little time to pay attention to the details of the games, and even fully play them all the way through.

Do you remember any interesting or funny stories that happened when working on the game?

The only one that I don't think I should tell. It involved someone getting fired.

I think I guessed. Kurt has already told me a story about an attendant in the men’s restroom.

Haha! Yes, that was indeed a funny moment that I remember quite well. It was Teddy Newton, who was an absolutely amazing and brilliant artist... When they fired him, it was so shocking to many of us because of how talented he was, and we couldn't believe the VPs didn't recognize that.

But yeah, he was just there for that day, not a week... After he was fired, I found out…and then later that day, I walked into the restroom, and there he was, all dressed up, offering people mouthwash and breath mints, saying to everyone, "I'm working for tips." It was Marc Teren, one of the VPs who later walked into the restroom and saw Teddy doing this, and apparently got very upset (I didn't see this happen, just heard about it), shortly after security came and escorted him out.

Oh... I remember I had the Genesis going into my mixing board, and on one of the buses, I had a really good reverb/delay unit. And Michael Giacchino came into my office to listen to what I had made. And I jokingly turned on the reverb and said "Too bad the Genesis can't sound like this!" And so I turned off the reverb effect. Shortly after that, some executives came by to listen to the music, and just as I was about to start my sequencer to play, Michael sneaked over to the mixer and turned the reverb back on. And the execs were like "Wow! This sounds AMAZING!!!" That was a funny moment.

Do you still have any graphics for this game? Concepts, arts, documents, whatever...

I think I have some marketing promo stuff in my files somewhere. Here you go!

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Do Goliath and the defeated Valkyries shout in your voice? Who else have you voiced in the game?

My voice was Goliath. If I recall, it was one of the artists, Ann-Bettina Colace who did the Valkyrie scream. I remember there was a marketing meeting going on while we were recording in my office, and they all got freaked out because they were hearing a woman scream. I had to apologize to them and explain it was for the Gargoyles game...

Was the techno track that plays in this Easter egg written by you specifically for the game, or did you use some of your early work? Who came up with the idea to put it there?

It was not early work... Chris and I were both fans of techno music, and he asked if I would compose something in a techno style for him, so I did. You will hear my voice scream "SEGA!" when that 3D ball screen comes up. At the time, Sega had some commercials that involved screaming "SEGA".

So I thought it would be funny to have the Sega title when you first power on the game do that. So we had my voice scream "SEGA!!!" when you'd turn on Gargoyles. Later one of the executives came into my office and said "Uh... So we were demoing Gargoyles and hear a scream of SEGA???" and I was like "Yeah, isn't it great?!?!?" And they said "No." So it got taken out, but Chris added it to the secret screen.

How much do you like the dark atmosphere of the game? Have you watched the animated series on which it is based?

I liked the game a lot. Never watched the series. I remember when I was asked to work on it, I was given an audio cassette tape that had the animated series theme song, and I just had to listen to it and transcribe it, make instruments and an arrangement for it. I remember that track, in particular, did not take very long for me to do, and I just made some decisions to use samples of percussion instruments to make things sound bigger, and I liked how that worked out.

What did you find particularly difficult when working on the game??

I think probably the boss music. I remember the decision to have specific music for that was made late, and so I think I had one day to compose it, and when I delivered it, I recall saying that had I had more time to work on it, it could have been better. I remember Chris and Joel saying how much they liked it, and that "your best work comes out when you've got a deadline!»

Thanks, Patrick!

You're welcome, Max.

Programming

Chris Shrigley

programmer

Hi Chris. How did you find yourself in this project and what exactly did you do?

Hi Max. I'm a little hazy on the timing, but I believe I was hired to work on the project specifically, although I didn't know that until late into the hiring process. I knew they were building out their in-house console dev team for some projects, but Gargoyles wasn't mentioned to me until I started. I was the programmer on the project, and I basically built a Genesis game engine (based on my game code from previous projects), all the tools for munging data and art into a usable format for the game, and all the gameplay and mechanics you see on screen.

Obviously, Gargoyles was made by Disney Interactive, but there is not a single mention of Disney anywhere in the game. Were there any concerns that such a dark game would harm the company's reputation?

Yes, as far as I know, they deemed Gargoyles too dark and edgy for the Disney brand. Obviously, all that stuff was way above my pay grade, but I remember that the Buena Vista Interactive brand was started specifically for Gargoyles and anything else that wouldn't fall into the cheery Disney bucket. Others probably have better insight on this than I have.

The game can be called brutal by Disney standards. In the platformers of those years (Aladdin, Earthworm Jim) they used the so-called Cartoon Violence when the figure of the enemy disappears in the cloud of smoke and the like. Does your team deliberately refused such a reception of bypassing violence?

I think Gargoyles was a bit of an experiment for Disney at the time. The TV show was very popular but had a harder edge than other Disney properties. I'm not sure "they" understood what we were proposing and ultimately building. The people designing and running the project all had a desire to make something not-so-Disney, and more in line with the games we were playing and enjoying ourselves. I think we got away with a lot simply because people who rubber-stamped stuff didn't really get it. I could be completely wrong on this, but that was my view at the time.

The game was very difficult. At the last level in the steel plant, the difficulty is off the charts. It did not seem to you that the difficulty plank was raised too high?

Yes, the game was way too hard in retrospect. The Forge level was particularly difficult, and I think I only managed to run through it a few times, myself. We relied a lot on the game testers in QA, who were all pretty much hard-core gamers (at the time), and they seemed to like it. I think a lot of the people involved at the time were still used to really hard coin-op and old console games, which were generally harder too. Also, it's easy to lose perspective on playability and balance when you've played something countless times and see it every single day for months on end.

The release of Gargoyles was also scheduled for SNES. This was even told in printed advertisements in the gaming press. What prevented this release?

I don't really have any insight into what happened and why the decision was ultimately made to cancel the SNES version, but I can speculate a little. I think that Gargoyles on Genesis didn't do as well as they wanted, and I think Disney did what they always do, and cut their losses.

As it seemed to me, the game turned out to be much gloomily the animated series itself. Did you really focus on something else, except for the original source?

The story and design were Joel Goodsell's, and the look/aesthetic was Thom Ang, who I believe was Art Director on the project, so that's was all on them. The game was definitely pushing the Disney boundaries pretty hard, and we knew it. I'm surprised we got away with it really, as it is a dark, violent game.

David Bergantino told me that during the development process, by accidentally pressing an unknown key combination, he discovered an Easter Egg hidden by you, which the company management wanted to remove from the code. Do you remember how to find it?

There were all sorts of cheats and a couple of easter eggs in the final released game. I vaguely remember people getting bent out of shape over a couple of greetings pages I added for myself and Joel. These could be invoked in game using various button press combinations. I don't actually remember if I was ever asked to remove them, or if I got into any real trouble over them, but regardless they were always going to make it into the final game. I was the only programmer on the project so it was easy to hide stuff from the producers. Sorry, David!

Do you remember any interesting or funny stories that happened when working on the game?

I could probably fill a small book with anecdotes, but they're mainly stories for drunken friends at the pub or local bar. Additionally, I don't really have the writing chops to put it all down here.

Do you still have any graphics for this game? Concepts, arts, sprites, level draft maps, whatever ...

I have a binder full of design and production notes. It's not as interesting as it sounds, but it's a really cool memento from the project. As far as in-game art and stuff goes, everything I have was included in the source package I released on my website a few years back. The art and animations were amazing to me, and I was continually blown away by the quality of the assets I was given to integrate and implement.

In the Disney games of those years (Aladdin, The Lion King, Maui Mallard) there was always a cheat menu in which you could select any level. Gargoyles doesn't have it. Do you remember why you didn't do it? Each time jumping by entering the code through the next level to the last boss is not the most convenient solution.

I guess a level select cheat is kind of expected, even as a QA tool. I did have a few cheats in there that when combined allows you to go anywhere on any level, and skip around as needed. I didn't need a level selector while developing, because I could start the project on any level with the dev kit anyway. Looking at the code, there are 9 cheats in the game.

Were there any ideas or whole levels that were not included in the game? If so, what caused them to be excluded: deadline, memory limitation, or something else?

Without a doubt, but I don't recall any details. Generally, I had strong opinions but didn't have much to do with design and story. At the start of any game, it's nothing but big ideas and crazy ambitions, but as things get refined and designers get reeled in by engineers and bean counters, things get streamlined and refined pretty quickly. This means lots of stuff gets cut and is brushed aside into a big pile of broken dreams. There were some things I wanted to do in code, like real-time fire simulations and vector balls, which I actually coded up and got working, but never made it into the game (the code is still in there though).

Speaking of 3-D balls. That hidden screen with your thanks, where orange balls spin in the most bizarre way under Patrick's techno track. How exactly did you manage to make their animations? They look amazing and could be a real gem in Vectorman. Wasn't it wasteful to hide so many ball animations from the unsuspecting player with the cartridge memory constraints you were trying to fit the rest of the game into?

The balls are sprites. The shapes and ball configurations are just a list of x,y,z coordinates (from 0,0,0 center), applied to the sprites using simple 3D math. The movement is also math, using a sin/cosine table to translate and rotating the points in 3D space. I sort the balls every frame, based on their z position. It's all written in 68K assembly language, and doesn't take up much space at all. The screen graphics are also reused from other places in the game.

David Bergantino recently answered me the following about Gargoyles:

"From what I recall, we ran out of time in production, and the end of the game was replaced by what was supposed to be a bunch of gameplay with essentially a slide show composed of the storyboards for that level to resolve the story. I wrote that section. "

Do you remember anything about this or maybe David is wrong? In my opinion, the gameplay is quite appropriate at the end of the game.

I don't remember this. I was rarely involved with the design and never in production decisions. The ending to Gargoylse seems pretty much complete and fine to me. You battle the big boss and you get some story wrap up in pictures and text. Standard stuff really. Not sure what more could have been done to wrap it all up in the time/space we had. That's not to say the game was rushed at the end because it absolutely was. The project was long and really pushed the limits of budget and schedule, and when we came down to the wire it was fairly brutal. I lived in a hotel for 3 months at the end of that project, because in the end, I was working 16 hour days, pretty much 6 days a week.

Judging by the numbering of the levels in the names of the folders in your source code archive, it lacks LEVEL04, LEVEL06, and LEVEL08. Are these levels not included in the final game? Although I could not recognize which level the LEVEL99 folder belongs to, as there were no animated sprites in it.

I don't recall why levels were cut, but I suspect the folder structure was laid out before the game really got nailed down. Naming conventions, folder structures, along with scripts to automate copies and compiles, and various tools, are usually defied early in the project. I wasn't involved in the design much, apart from being a critic and moaning about how hard stuff would be to implement, but the game basically told a story and the levels reflect that. If levels were dropped, then I imagine it was because design and story changed as the scope and schedule changed.

Your archive with the source code for Gargoyles contains folders with sprites from the game including unused ones. Among them there is a folder called SHELL, where there are sprites of scratching with claws on a stone surface and a rotating fragment of the castle. Were these sprites planned for the intro screen or the menu screen? And why did you refuse to use them in the game?

Yes, I do remember those. My guess is they were just too resource heavy and had to be cut from the game. The memory map for Gargoyles was very tight, so everything that ended up in the game was strictly budgeted, negotiated and approved (or not). At this point, you may be thinking, "But Chris, you had room for your hidden greetings screens...", and you would be right. By the end of the project, all the big decisions and cuts were made, and the final memory map and usage were fixed, and there was just enough room left to wedge some fun Easter eggs in there.

Yes, I do remember those. My guess is they were just too resource heavy and had to be cut from the game. The memory map for Gargoyles was very tight, so everything that ended up in the game was strictly budgeted, negotiated and approved (or not). At this point, you may be thinking, "But Chris, you had room for your hidden greetings screens...", and you would be right. By the end of the project, all the big decisions and cuts were made, and the final memory map and usage were fixed, and there was just enough room left to wedge some fun Easter eggs in there.

In your Goliath sprite folder, he only appears in the standard color (grey skin tone). While in a couple of levels of the game with fire lighting, his sprites, as well as the life indicator itself, are tinted with an orange tint to match the color of the environment. Was this recoloring of sprites for specific locations done by you programmatically in the game code itself?

Remapping palettes on graphics was a very common method of adding variety. There were multiple instances where graphics were re-paletted or animated with palette animations in Gargoyles. So yes, although I can't remember specific details on the Goliath question, I'm sure he was re-paletted in code.

In those folders, I found a number of enemies and environment sprites that were not used in the final build. And even a separate TRILOBOT character who didn't make it into the game at all. Or the crows flying out of the Eye of Odin. Are all those sprites left on the cutting floor due to cartridge memory limits?

Yes, pretty much. A combination of hard cartridge/hardware limits, and time/budget constraints. Pretty typical stuff really. Games go through an array of changes and they rarely end the way they were first imagined or designed. Scope always changes during development and things are cut because of time, money or technical limitations.

The second boss with the hammer looks pretty intimidating. He can strike at close and long range. The whole problem is that he can be defeated in an elementary way, simply by hitting him without stopping with a simple blow. Did you know about it? Was this a bug that the QA team missed?

I really have no clue about old bugs like that. Games have lots of bugs :D The boss fight one was never caught by QA, to my knowledge.

Is there anything you've created in this game that you're especially pleased with or proud of? If so, what exactly was it? Was it especially difficult for you to do this?

A couple of things stand out from the project. I was quite proud of the enemy AI system. It used bits to describe enemy behavior and a bunch of macros that allowed me to "script" enemy AI behavior. I could make enemies do things based on where the player was in relation to the enemy or what they were doing. The scripts used bits in a 2-byte "instruction" as flags to call various generic routines that controlled the enemies. Attack, jump, evade, is the player above or below? Jumping, attacking? Then react accordingly. It ended up being quite flexible and I was able to write most of the generic enemies using the system. All very primitive by today's standards, but it was really cool and saved me a lot of time at the time.

There were also some cool effects using various playfields and scrolling that were cool at the time. The elevator rotating a few degrees using some hardware scrolling tricks. The subway train parallax with the pseudo-3D ceiling. I remember randomly showing the subway scroller to Mark Lorenzen, who was visiting the office for some unknown reason, and him being blown away by it. High praise from the guy that designed Vectorman. I was quite chuffed at the time.

How do you yourself assess your work on this project now? Would you like to change something in this game now, if you had the opportunity? Is it one of your favorites in your portfolio?

Gargoyles was pretty much the last game I made for Genesis and contained all the stuff I'd learned from previous projects, along with all the experience and expertise I'd accumulated on the platform over 5 years or so I'd been working on it. To me, it's some of my best coding. Certainly as far as machine code/assembly language goes. Pretty much everything after Gargoyles was C/++ or some high-level language or other. So Gargoyles represent the culmination of all the low-level machine code and assembly programming I'd done up till then.

I'm quite proud of the code in Gargoyles, warts and all. As far as doing things differently, that's a tough one regarding the code. Things can always be done better, faster, more efficiently, but the code I wrote for Gargoyles was the best I could do at the time. Certainly, there are things I'd change about the game, mainly around difficulty and playability, but that's pretty much it. Out of all the games I've worked on, Gargoyles is still one of my favorites.

Thanks a lot, Chris!

You're welcome, Max. It was a good time and a good project.

Joel Goodsell

lead level designer

Hi Joel. Your contacts were given to me by John Fiorito, lead artist on Maui Mallard.

Hello Max. I really enjoyed your piece on Maui – lots of good friends on that project.

How did you find yourself in this project and what exactly did you do?

I’m credited as Lead Level Design, but I was also the only designer, and this was my first professional game. So I was a baby associate designer learning the ropes, the level designer with a lot of feedback from the producers and others, the lead level designer driving the later half of level production as those producers got slammed with other projects, and for the last six months or so the default lead designer working with the lead programmer and other key people to drive the project home. As you can tell, there weren’t a lot of us on projects in those days, we all kind of had to do all the levels of our fields and even help each other out in each others’ fields.

I’d made a bunch of amateur games throughout the ’80s, yet finished college with a different degree and career path – but couldn’t get games out of my head. So after finishing my degree, I started cold-pitching games in the early ’90s. My girlfriend at the time was interning with the musician doing the music for The Lion King video game and one day he said: “Hey, the producers on The Lion King need someone for a new project. Joel does that stuff, right?” A few days later, I walked into Patrick Gilmore’s office with a backpack full of design work, sat with him and Michael Giacchino as they poured over a design problem they were having with the first map – a beautiful blue-pencil draft map by Kurt Dumas – and proposed a solution. It's a property I’d never heard of, so my solution was too traditionally Disney cartoony, but it is a reasonable idea functionally. They walked me around the office meeting people, eventually seating me with the art director – Thom Ang – and he had the visual bible for Gargoyles. We spoke so long riffing ideas that Patrick eventually had to come and recover me – I suspect that symbiosis with Thom cemented their decision to try me out. That and there really weren’t many professional designers in the industry in 1994 yet.

Obviously, Gargoyles was made by Disney Interactive, but there is not a single mention of Disney anywhere in the game. Were there any concerns that such a dark game would harm the company's reputation?

Gargoyles – the game and show – was part of an initiative to explore more teen-level content but without alienating grade-schoolers. We had to develop the game aesthetic with very limited exposure to the show’s art and characters for a long time – we had the character and art bible and scripts for the first six episodes, but nothing else for I think the first year. So we largely guessed. Fortunately, and also because the artists on the project were amazing (most of us have been working together on and off for more than two decades), we guessed well and matched the tone of the show reasonably well by the time we were able to see the very first episode the day it launched. In the end, the painterly aesthetic and visual ambition of the video game team was widely praised for achieving new heights of visuals on the Sega Genesis – so any fears dropped away.

Was Buena Vista Interactive, which is a publisher of the game, was created specifically for the release of Gargoyles?

As I recall (there are business people who can probably elaborate more accurately), Buena Vista Interactive – like the different film divisions that existed at the same time – was to allow a more diverse slate of titles to be created that may not always fall strictly under the Disney brand. These were the Eisner days. Eiger later brought everything back under the Disney banner in the mid-2000’s – which I believe was the right call. I believe he said, “If it’s good enough to make, it’s good enough to brand Disney”.

The game can be called brutal by Disney standards. In particular, there are killings of people, including Valkyrie women. The corpses of the dead remain to lie on the ground, which was never in the Disney games. In the platformers of those years (Aladdin, Earthworm Jim) they used the so-called Cartoon Violence when the figure of the enemy disappears in the cloud of smoke and the like. Does your team deliberately refused such a reception of bypassing violence?

LOL. The Valkyrie death scream was one of our artists and a friend. We were all stunned and a tad terrified when we heard that scream coming from her in the sound room just steps from the dev-area – but after regaining our composure, everyone said “Holy moly, THAT absolutely goes in”.

We wanted the game to have the same gravity that the TV show did. We never specifically said the human antagonists were dead – but after the opening show episode had Goliath knocking an antagonist from a castle wall, we absolutely didn’t shy away from being able to throw those same enemies off castle walls as well. Persistence of the environment was important – we wanted you to really experience the persistent change an 8 feet high solid-stone strong-man would have on the world. So we kept the defeated antagonists around and saved the state of objects you’d affected if you passed off-screen and back on.

The game was very difficult. At the last level in the steel plant, the difficulty is off the charts. It did not seem to you that the difficulty plank was raised too high?

Games back then were significantly more difficult in general. We wanted a game that core gamers at the time could respect. Additionally, since games were relatively short, they were designed with the intent that a player wouldn’t on average be able to win on the first try – you’d play several times, getting better and farther each time. However, we also knew that the game had to be reasonably playable by grade-schoolers and average players, so we had three difficulty settings. Easy – notwithstanding some usability moments we’d smooth out better these days – is probably closer to what “normal” difficulty would be in a 3rd person action adventure today.

But yeah, Hard difficulty was seriously EPIC. For a long time, no one at DI could beat it. We had ONE requirement for Hard mode before we submitted it to Sega for approval – ONE person had to beat it on Hard mode with a videotaped verification. And sure enough, a week or so before we needed to submit, we managed to get ONE person to beat it on Hard with a recording. I think that’s one of the reasons why this game comes up in conversation still – beating that game on Hard is a real badge of honor.

The release of Gargoyles was also scheduled for SNES. This was even told in printed advertisements in the gaming press. What prevented this release?

The SNES version had a separate programmer. Originally I was on both versions and both were supposed to share the same design, assets, and maps. The different tech and art requirements and capabilities of the SNES and Genesis required more departure between the two over time, and another designer was brought on to focus on the SNES, while myself and Chris (Genesis programmer) focused on the Genesis. It was is engine, and he and I collaborated very tightly on all the new tech needed to pull off that game. We even spent weekends at his house working through issues.

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The SNES began to lag behind the Genesis version over time, which also drove some personal conflicts. Eventually, it was clear that we needed to focus and get one version out the door. The Genesis version itself was walking a tightrope itself at the same time. Chris and I had a tough heart to heart about the reality of the project being completable – but both of us were a thousand percent committed to doing what was necessary to get the game through that risk moment, finish it, and get it out the door. We strapped ourselves into an intense and focused month of getting the title through the key issues and ensured we had a solid plan and commitment from the team to take it home.

How was it working with 3D robot animations?

The 3D animation was done in-house. We had early SGI’s and some young 3D artists. I think Ed Trillo may have been just out of High School even.

As it seemed to me, the game turned out to be much gloomily the animated series itself. Did you focus on something other than the original source?

We didn’t see the episodes until they were on TV, so we only had a thin visual bible and the first six scripts to go through. So the ending aesthetic differences were an outgrown of both our extrapolation from the limited source material we had in hand, as well as influenced by our own collective personal aesthetic at the time – a group of young mid-20’s barely out of college. So we were inclined to lean dark and serious. I still really like that we went with a more painterly look and a bit more edge than the source material – it was true to who we were as a group and I’m proud of that.

I would have adjusted a few things with more foresight into the source property and time. The sepia tone story screens by Thom Ang were outstanding – aesthetically superior to the color versions. I’d have used those exclusively, but also produced additional ones to create a more cohesive story for the Eye of Odin’s journey. And I’d have involved Xanatos and Demona in the modern story in a more core way.

Since we only had access to the first six scripts, we didn’t have a strong idea of how core Elisa, Brooklyn, Broadway, and Lexington would be to Goliath. So their involvement was sacrificed in favor of a more focused story and more enemy characters (cart capacity was extremely limited). If we’d had more time and more cart memory, I’d have involved Elisa in a mentor capacity, possibly even an NPC follow partner in one mission, and involved the three gargoyles as power-up attacks you could call in.

Were there any ideas or whole levels that were not included in the game? If so, what caused them to be excluded: deadline, memory limitation, or something else?

Yes. And for many reasons. Games always involve cut material at every stage – you realize a design idea is functionally duplicitous with another idea, so you pick the best one; scheduling out the work makes it clear there’s not enough time/people/money to make the idea as good as it needs to be; prototypes turn out to simply not be as fun as you thought they’d be or you’re out of cart size. Gargoyles had all of those at various stages – but most at the design stage.

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We cut 4 robots – all at the design stage, but I think Ed had gotten started on the ED-Bot/TrilloBot modeling. And two levels – the Museum and Hydro plant. But only the museum had gone into production and never got past the first pass design blockout and preliminary art exploration. But we also added more maps to The Forge level during late production because … inspiration during late-night coffee-infused insanity of a 25-year-old.

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Actually, all the levels originally only included two maps and a boss, all of which – except the Subway got expanded to three maps and a boss. Several early concepts for what a specific map in a specific level might be changed overproduction as well – for instance, there was a siege-ram map originally as the boss of the Castle, but conceptually in early blockout it wasn’t working – thus the Sorcerer Boss was born.

The boss of the Rooftop level was originally an aerial diving battle with Demona, and the Museum’s boss was the elevator – but the Museum and Aerial mechanics were out of scope, so we kept the Elevator Boss as the boss of the Rooftops level.

David Bergantino recently answered me the following about Gargoyles: "From what I recall, we ran out of time in production, and the end of the game was replaced by what was supposed to be a bunch of gameplay with essentially a slide show composed of the storyboards for that level to resolve the story. I wrote that section." Do you remember anything about this or maybe David is wrong? In my opinion, the gameplay is quite appropriate at the end of the game.

There were more ambitious story screens and game-controlling-the-hero connective story planned – not just for the end, but between all the levels. But they were significantly out of scope art and coding-wise as we were racing to the end, as it was, we just barely squoze in the story screens we did get.

Chris posted the source code of the Genesis version and the test version for SNES in his archives from 2012. I looked at the contents of the Genesis version folders, and I had a number of questions:

Judging by the numbering of the levels in the names of the folders, it lacks LEVEL04, LEVEL06, and LEVEL08. Are these levels not included in the final game? Although I could not recognize which level the LEVEL99 folder belongs to, as there were no animated sprites in it.

Level numbering on projects changes overproduction, so these folders don't exactly match up to the levels that I know went into the design phases, but not production. I believe LEVEL04 would have been the Museum. And LEVEL06 would have been the Hydro plant. I don't believe there ever was a LEVEL08. However, there was one more level planned, but abandoned in the early design phases before it would have gotten a production folder: the Castle atop Xanatos' skyscraper and the Atrium below. The Castle/Atrium would have come between the Rookery and Museum, and the Museum before the Rooftops. The Hydropant would have come between the Subway and Forge.

In those folders, I found a number of enemies and environment sprites that were not used in the final build. And even a separate TRILOBOT character who didn't make it into the game at all. Or the crows flying out of the Eye of Odin. Are all those sprites left on the cutting floor due to cartridge memory limits?

Cut for both cart space and/or production time/resources. There were several robots cut at various different stages of design/production. At some point in every production, you have to make hard choices on what gets finished and shipped.

Was there a Gargoyles wrap party like the one the Maui team did in 1995? If so, do you have any photos from there?

Yes, I have a photo I can share. This is what I have. The first photo: myself at the Gargoyles wrap party.

The second photo: myself and the designer of the SNES version (Thomas) at the wrap party. The third photo: myself, Alan (designer on Maui Mallard), and Marcus (QA on Gargoyles) at the wrap party.

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Do you still have any joint photos of the Gargoyles team? Most of all I would like to see such photos from the period of work on the game itself. But if you have joint photographs of a later time or our days, then this will also come in handy for my article.

Unfortunately, I have no team photo, but I do have one photo of the game being worked on. Left photo from above: myself at my workstation working on Gargoyles. Unstaged – just happenstance I was wearing a Gargoyles shirt. The caption was drawn in by one of the artists on the team.

I also assume that the wrap party took place before it became known that the SNES version would not be released. Did it take place the same time as the Maui warp party (September-October 1995, according to my guess)?

I don't recall when we announced the SNES version would not be released.

The wrap party was at Gotham in Santa Monica and about the same time as the Maui party ... Ha! I just realized I still have the invite - which was a brick. The party was Thursday, October 19.

Do you remember any interesting or funny stories that happened when working on the game?

The artists would have epic Super Bomberman contests over lunch. Those were some of the most fun MP moments I’ve ever experienced – four of us crammed into one cube trash-talking each other and making the execs super uncomfortable.

Our sister project, Maui Mallard, was a constant source of inspiration with all the clever work they were doing.

Michael Giacchino – the film composer – was one of the producers on Gargoyles as well as composed the music for the game. We were friends, but there was one moment when we were both crazy stressed out – he was getting married and pulled between I think six different projects, and I was hopped up on thick AF coffee and maybe 2 hours of sleep and we ended up in a yelling match over something dumb I suspect neither of us could possibly recall today – we worked it out and remained friends through our time at Disney together.

We brought on Mark Lorenzen to help out for a time mid-production – he’s the one who developed the tech for the train paralaxing level with Chris Shrigley – brilliant stuff at the time. I finished up that level through the ship, and have always regretted that I didn’t have the time to take it to the full 3-map motif of all the other levels, with strong differentiation between each map – I had plenty of ideas, but no time.

Several necessary animations for a couple of the Vikings didn’t get ordered from Capers/Renegade. So I ended up making a few of them myself in DAnimator. The electric effect on the train connector was also done a designer-special that shipped when we had no more time with the CGI team but really needed the clarity that those weren’t just background elements you could run past.

There’s a well-known secret thanks screen you can get to with a cheat code, complete with a fun fake 3D ball effect and techno track by our sound guru Patrick Collins. But there’s another thanks screen that no one has found yet – and I forgot the code to it (no really, I did).

I pushed to get a ridiculous amount of shrapnel to throw up when the elevator crashed at the end of Level 3. We received a TRC violation about a game slowdown. We sent it back saying that the slow-motion was a cinematic feature for dramatic effect. They accepted that and it shipped with all the shrapnel.

In my first months as a professional game designer, Patrick Gilmore (producer) gave me one of the most important principles of design I use in everything I do, and everything I teach other designers – that “Design is ENTIRELY communication to the player.”

This was almost everyone’s first game. We were all very young. Most of us have worked together over the last 25 years at various companies and remain friends.

Thank you so much, Joel, for such a detailed story.

Thank you, Max – this was fun.

The story of the game about the winged guards doesn't end there. A couple of days before the release of this article, it became known at D23 expo that Gargoyles will receive a remaster on next-generation consoles and PC. The developer is Empty Clip Studios. By mid September 2022, there are no other details yet.

P.S. Based on these interviews, in January 2022 in the British magazine Retro Gamer (#229), my 6-page article on the creation of Gargoyles was published, which was a summary of everything that you read above.

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The End

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© Max Nasikan. September 2022.

My previous interviews with Maui Mallard team:

1) Interview with lead artist John Fiorito (September 2020)

2) Giant interview with 12 creators of Maui (December 2020):
Part 1
Part 2

3) Interview with Eurocom programmer Jon Williams (March 2022)