Concept Art

A quick sketch, planning out the new details that would be needed in the Dock location. New additions included the walkway to the Outer Dock, trying out a more modern upgrade on the Scumm Bar, and LeChuck’s ominous ship moored on the horizon.

An initial planning sketch for the Scumm Bar.

Thumbnail art of the SCUMM Bar.

Initial design of the SCUMM Bar kitchen

An initial planning sketch for the Low Street on Mêlée Island.

An initial planning sketch for the Voodoo Shop.

Thumbnail art of the Mêlée Island jail.

An initial planning sketch of Wally's Map Shop, for Rex to try out the layout while fitting in all the items that were required. Rex felt it was a little too cramped, so it was expanded horizontally in the next stage of development when the room was blocked out in solid colours.

Early design of the Mêlée Island overview.

LeChuck’s ship was a puzzle for the whole team, to work out how all the rooms would fit together in a varied but understandable way. This 3D block-out was made to establish the shape of the vessel at various angles, and to be sure they could jam all they needed into its creaking hull!

An earlier angle the team tried for the Top Deck on LeShip, but they found to be too limiting. The final version used a different angle that was useful for a much wider range of scenes, and gave plenty of room for events to happen at the back of the ship as well.

An initial planning sketch for LeShip.

An initial planning sketch with voodoo theming for LeShip.

Early design of the Mêlée Island museum.

Thumbnail art of LeChuck's cabin inside the LeShip.

Thumbnail art of LeShip's galley.

Thumbnail art of the lower deck of LeShip.

Thumbnail art of the Sea Monkey shipwreck on a Monkey Island beach.

Thumbnail art of the skulls puzzle on Monkey Island.

Thumbnail art of the mysterious clearing on Terror Island.

Thumbnail art of the twisting path on Terror Island.

Early design of the Terror Island maze. This image is found in the game resources but isn't used in the game. It suggests that the early maze design involved a lizard.

Thumbnail art of the labyrinth in the cave of Terror Island.

Thumbnail art of the rooms used for the three challenges on Brrr Muda Island.

Thumbnail art of Bella Fisher's sunken ship.

Initial sketches planning out the details of the different floors beneath the monkey head.

Thumbnail art of a deli shop that wasn’t used in the game.

Early design of Guybrush Threepwood. His jacket is shorter, and his face is less square in the final version.

Early design of Guybrush with different facial expressions.

Initial designs for the lookout. They ended up going with a variation of C.

Thumbnail art of Guybrush talking to the lookout up close.

Some initial designs for captain Madison. They ended up going with a variation of D.

Initial designs for Trent.

Five variations of LeChuck's face. The final version ended up being a mix between B and C.

Magazine cover painting of Monkey Island’s zombie ghost pirate LeChuck.

Quick initial doodle of how the next generation of buccaneering might look. A version of (H) ended up in the game, playing cards against herself. And (G) ultimately became Marlon Marlin, the fanciest diner to ever enter the Scumm Bar.

More initial doodles of how the next generation of buccaneering might look like.

Some initial designs for Iron Rose.

Some initial designs for Gullet. Generally, Rex could go wild with different types of face designs, but the team kept more standardisation for body shapes to make the animations a little more manageable for their large cast of characters!

As Gullet needed to share animations with Guybrush, the team gave him a redesign before moving to the animation stage. You can see in the 2nd image how his body overlaps exactly over Guybrush, whilst looking very different (Rex thinks of the final Gullet as ‘Zombie Nick Cave’).

Putra is one of Rex's favourite characters from the game. He loved her written character bio and that she was a Zombie chef, which to him suggested she might use parts of her own body in her cooking if she was running low on ingredients.

In Putra's designs she slowly moved away from a scary school dinner lady into a design that was more sinewy with bits of exposed flesh and brains - suggesting she’d put a bit too much of herself in her cooking!

Some initial designs for Conrad Lee.

Alternative designs for the character of Ned Filigree.

Some initial designs for Judge Plank.

Initial Herman Toothrot's designs.

The team storyboarded every cutscene, close-up shot, and complex scripted sequence, so they could play the game with placeholder animatics and get a feel for the timings and framing before doing all the final art and tricky scripting.

A storyboard from the “Mop Sabre” cutscene. Sarah captured a lot of the characters personalities in very quick drawings, and the poses and facial expressions were great inspiration for the animation team when they were bringing the final scenes to life.

Storyboards of different scenes of the game.

More storyboards of different scenes of the game.

Even more storyboards of different scenes of the game.

Storyboards of multiple scenes.

More storyboards of different scenes.

Storyboards of the different post-credits scenes.

Early design of eleven inventory items.

This is a thumbnail art of the sea map. It still includes Cogg Island, which was later cut due time constraints.

Initial design of the five keys.

This is an early design of the end stinger when Guybrush says "There isn't any one answer to what the secret is".