General:Jonah Lobe's Posts

Jonah Lobe's Posts
Medium/Format	Online Forum
Interviewee(s)	Jonah Lobe
Hosted By	Reddit

These are a few notable comments from Jonah Lobe on The Elder Scrolls setting.

2016Edit

On the Spriggan Matron (04-27-2016)Edit

I came up with the idea of the Spriggan Matron toward the end of Skyrim's production. I wanted an older, more mature version of the Spriggan; if the Spriggan were young and fast and dangerous dryads, then the Matrons were wise and autumn-colored. Also, although their stomachs are missing, I wanted to imply by her body and posture that she was pregnant. When was the last time you were attacked by a pregnant wooden lady who is also home to swarms of glowing orange bees?

On Arvak (04-29-2016)Edit

I made Arvak for a one-week long game jam at Bethesda Softworks. This Game Jam was the first of its kind; we had one week to create anything that are Howard's dreamed of. There was one piece of concept art that was never used, created by the concept artist Ray Lederer, which depicted a flaming horse skeleton. I loved it, and I decided to make it for the Jam. I never put it in the game myself; I was moved up to Fallout 4 by then. Soon, however, I saw it being used in the Skyrim DLC, and realized they'd changed it to ghostly blue. I dig that blue, but to me, it was never so cool as when it was flame-colored...

2018Edit

On the Female Draugr (04-24-2018)Edit

I created the Male Draugr first, as there was plenty of concept art for them & many directions to explore. When it was time to create the Female, however, I had virtually nothing to work with. My Art Director simply told me: "Imagine Red Sonja... but dead."

I'd already designed the "beaten metal" look (the Nords, I reasoned, had barely ventured into the iron age and so didn't cast their armor), but I needed to streamline it a bit to accommodate a sleeker, more graceful design. Where the men's armor sprouted ram horns, the women wore antlers - a tribute, I reasoned, to the Spriggan of Skyrim (which I also created). I opened the back & used form & line-work to suggest the sleekness of a cocktail dress. I gave them jewelry, too, but integrated the semi-precious stones directly into their heavy iron plate.

I wanted to forge something bad-ass, practical & sexy. I believe I succeeded... judging from the number of women who cosplay as Aela the Huntress!

On the Dragonbone Armor (05-05-2018)Edit

The original concept was designed by Adam Adamowicz and then modeled/textured by myself. I loved the art but - a little turned off by the high-fantasy idea of dressing oneself in bone (which, let's face it, would never work and would fit horribly) - I lobbied for a scrimshaw treatment. That idea was rejected, but the end-product still feels pretty believable, I think. I didn't want you to be able to recognize entire bones, as Dragon bones would be, for the most part, too large and impractical to wear in whole pieces, so I had hewed them down and capped in black metal. I *loved* the black metal + white bone treatment from the concept art, so I stuck to that!

On the Giants (05-23-2018)Edit

A lot of people don't know this, but I originally designed the Giant to look like my father, [name redacted]. With his weathered features and weary demeanor, the Skyrim Giant was meant to convey a profound feeling of oldness, of a long life lived in the sun. I wanted players to feel like children again, small, in awe of the largeness of our parents as they moved around the house. To create this, I referenced the art of Adam Adamowicz (obviously - he was the concept artist there at Bethesda Softworks!), farmers from around the world (to get that creased-skin look) and African tribal scarring (blended with a Celtic influence).

The model, fully-clothed, weighs in at around 12k polys. Watch out for that club - it'll send you into orbit. (Fun-fact: We at Bethesda identified that physics bug in the game almost right away... and then decided it was too hilarious to take out!)

On the Ancient Nordic Armor (09-04-2018)Edit

I had a wonderful time designing this armor. Playing with the feel of metal and leather, creating creases wherever the stitches were too tight, and just designing something that I thought was both bad-ass and sexy. I wanted it to look practical, old, totally original and yet very familiar. The secret ingredient I used (which you can see in the backless, strappy look of it) was, in fact, that I copied the essential shapes and feel of a cocktail dress! 😉

On the Male Draugr (12-28-2018)Edit

I loved creating the Draugr for Skyrim. Undead are always fun to make, but when I saw the many pages of concept art that came off the desk of Adam Adamowicz, I immediately fell in love. The Draugr are not sagging, rotting, shambling undead, and they're not horrors - not exactly. They are soldiers and warriors of legend, sworn to the undying task of guarding the resting places of their people - they are strong, and angry, and the dry, frozen catacombs have caused their skin to shriven into petrified leather.

In modeling and texturing the Draugr, I wanted to convey a sense of power and ferocity, and that feeling like if you tapped the skin with your knuckle, it would sound like knocking wood. And the suit of armor that he's wearing - with its straight angles and beaten bronze-age appearance - helped me establish a metalwork style that I then propagated over to all the other armor sets I did, like the Dragonbone and Dragonscale armors. I just love that hand-made look...

2019Edit

On the Male Draugr (01-11-2019)Edit

Anyone remember these old coots? 💀

Of all the creatures and things I made at Bethesda, the Draugr were among my very favorite. There was so much concept art to pick from, and so much room to add personal touches. I modeled/textured his skin to look like Ötzi the Iceman (check him out!) and made his armor straight-edged and hammer-forged, to hint at his strength and resilience. He is a furious warrior, rendered in metal and beef jerky. Mm...😋

Any reason the eyes of the Draugr were changed from Red to Blue between Bloodmoon and Skyrim? Were there any creatures from Bloodmoon you wanted to make a return? (06-18-2019)Edit

No reason for the eyecolor change, yes I always wanted to remake those Draugr!

Do you recall any cut creatures from Skyrim? (06-18-2019)Edit

We were originally planning/hoping to add Centaurs to the game, but they got cut because they were way too difficult to make work. I was slated to do them until they got canceled :/

2020Edit

On the Dragon Priest aesthetic (03-11-2020)Edit

When I created this dude for Skyrim, I imagined that in life he looked like [Mads Mikkelsen] 💀🔥

I wanted the Dragon Priests to radiate a feeling of decrepit arrogance and authority... I hope that came across.

On the Dragonborn Helm (04-16-2020)Edit

~The Dragonbone Helm~

While at Bethesda, I had the singular pleasure of working on a near daily basis with the incredible concept artist Adam Adamowicz. He was one of the few concept artists in the entire industry who worked in traditional media most of the time: pencils, markers, pens.. His style was completely unique, rough-hewn and scribbly, which as a result suggested a great deal but left quite a lot to the imagination. At times, especially early on, this worked against me a bit, because the lack of specifics put too much pressure on me to improvise and invent (Sheogorath’s outfit from The Shivering Isles was one such asset, it was so detailed but scribbly that I (who’d only been employed for a few months at that point) damn near had a panic attack!), but as my time there went on, and my skills and talent and experience improved, I began to love this. Because Adam’s work was so suggestive, I begin to focus on the FEEL of the thing, rather than the details, which I then felt empowered to fill out on my own. This allowed me to focus on channeling his unique genius, get the basic message across in a way that pleased the art director, and still left me plenty of room to perform my own creative dance with each asset. In short, his style inspired the hell out of me, but still let me stretch my own imagination... and that’s honestly all he ever wanted.

RIP Adam.

Here is the Dragonbone Helm, along with the original artwork (which is digital). Something I loved about the design was the bone-white all over, with the black front of the helmet... reminded me of a termite or something. As you can see, I pushed and pulled a lot of things around, the curving horns most of all.

On the Ancient Nordic Helmets (04-21-2020)Edit

When I was very little - before I read any of the Lord of the Rings, or watched my first anime, or had even heard of Dungeons & Dragons - mythology was my go-to source for fantasy. I remember owning this one paperback book of Greek mythology, entitled “A Fair Wind for Troy,” that had this spectacular cover art with an armored skeleton in the background.

I had never seen a helmet like the one it was wearing, nor have I ever seen an artistic rendition of a skeleton wearing armor. It was all *so cool* looking, and I was in love. Then, 20 years later, I helped to make Skyrim. And I brought the helmet back.

As I mentioned in the last couple posts, Adam’s sketches were very loose, and left a lot to be imagination. When designing the female Draugr, I took the initiative and created one helmet based on this Grecian design. This is, in my opinion, how fantasy is created; by borrowing elements from the real world and giving them a twist. In this case, the helmet was iron instead of bronze, hammered instead of cast, laced with nordic designs, and armed with a pair of streamlined antlers (which I then echoed in the Spriggan’s design, to hint at a cultural link). The end result was this, and it is one of my favorite designs I’ve ever made.

On the Dragon Priest Masks (04-28-2020)Edit

You never know, when creating something, what exactly is going to resonate with your audience, or why. I have spent weeks and weeks laboring on pieces of art that, in the end, simply failed to rouse the passions of anyone. And then, there are assets like the Dragon Priest Masks, which took me no more than a few days to build in total, and yet have somehow captured the imaginations of millions of Skyrim players.

It probably had something to do with the fact that they are totally unaccounted for in all the writings or lore in the world of Tanriel, and thus represent a great mystery. It might have been the unspoken challenge of knowing that they were nine spread throughout the world, which appealed to the Pokémon-esque “Gotta Catch Em All” collectible-fiend in us all. Or maybe it was the different powers they granted, which meant that, however you played, there was a right mask out there... just for you.

On the Helm of Yngol and the Draugr (04-29-2020)Edit

~The Helm of Yngol~

As I mentioned in my last post, the concept artist Adam Adamowicz had a very unique style; highly suggestive and extremely inexact. This is nowhere more evident than in his work on the Draugr from Skyrim. He focused on quantity, and tried to generate a great number of different concepts that would put a new face on an old fantasy trope: the undead warrior.

His work was brilliant, of course: his undead creations had a unique dry beef jerky sort of aesthetic, and they dressed in epic suits of heavy iron armor caked with rust and dangling with shredded chainmail.

Translating his sketches into precise 3D art was more than a little difficult, because he had drawn so many different possibilities, and there were so many different directions to go... but one thing the art director made clear was that he wanted one particular kind of helmet to be larger and more intimidating than the others, just like in this sketch of a Draugr King (attached). I designed three helmets in all, and while the one with the downturned horns became the most common and perhaps iconic of the three, the high-horned one took on a different role: it became the signature look of the most terrifying Draugr of all: the Draugr Deathlord.

And also, with some minor textural tweaks, it became a different helmet altogether: the famed Helm of Yngol!

On the Dragon Priest Masks (05-09-2020)Edit

Designed in secret by myself and level designer [Joel Burgess], the Dragon Priest Masks were a little labor of love slipped into Skyrim at the 11th hour. I based their aesthetic on a wooden mask from Nigeria, and built-in an expression that could be construed as old and wise on “good” players or forbidding and cruel on “bad” ones – Skyrim was about choice, after all.

I never anticipated they’d be such a hit, but even a quick image search here on Instagram or Google yields hundreds and hundreds of fan-made designs, some of which are just outlandishly cool... and even after I moved on to Fallout 4, the aesthetic was copied and used to spearhead the Skyrim DLC, “Dragonborn.”

On the Dragon Priest Masks made for Skyrim (12-05-2020)Edit

I tried to make them neutral enough in look and expression that [players] could wear them with any outfit.

Why are the Dragon Priest masks found on Solstheim different to the mainland masks? (12-05-2020)Edit

There’s not much backstory - I just invented them and their look and we put them in the game, then when the DLC came to the table, they used the aesthetic and evolved from there!

What is your favorite of the Dragon Priest Masks? (12-08-2020)Edit

The wood one! It’s the first one I made, and I based it on a real wood mask from Western Africa.

What culture are the mask based on? (12-08-2020)Edit

West African! Nigerian mask, I believe.

On Alduin (12-20-2020)Edit

Oh & while we’re on the subject of Dragons, here’s the 3D model of Alduin next to the 2D concept art, drawn by the late Adam Adamowicz. It was a privilege to work with him - and the other Bethesda Concept Artists, [Ray Lederer] and [Ilya Nazarov] - but what I valued even more than Adam’s drawing hand was his mind. It was totally unique, totally bizarre, positively effervescent with ideas. When I saw the art for Alduin, I asked Adam: “So what were you looking at when you designed him?” and he said “raw ore, slate, and meteorite.”

And so I thought, “Yes, that is very good” and I sat down at my desk and I spent the next six weeks sculpting a Dragon God made out of meteorite. I was very excited about him – so excited that I gave myself tendonitis because I was sculpting every little goddamn tiny fissure like an absolute maniac. But it’s okay, because Alduin is literally a Black Metal Dragon God of Death, and I’d rather sacrifice my body to him than to a particularly stubborn jar of pickles.

All hail Adam Adamowicz. ❤️🤟🏻

2021Edit

On the Giants (01-16-2021)Edit

It’s known by now (among certain niche audiences) that I sculpted the Skyrim Giant to look like my father. Apparently, that fact was recently featured on the front page of Imgur just a few days ago (although neither myself nor my father were attributed by name). It’s a funny little Easter egg, but I have to admit that it has also secured in me an enduring love for the Giants. I wanted Skyrim to be a place of a wonder, majesty, and myth… So I did not want to create Giants that were simple brutish monsters, but old, noble creatures who wanted only to tend to the herds of Mammoth that were their flock. Given how many people have told me that they always resisted killing my father in the game, I’d say I succeeded in getting those traits across! This pleases me greatly.😁

But I know some of you have been killing my father, eating his 15 lb wheels of cheese, and cutting off his toes. And many of you have been launched into Tamriel’s atmosphere for your troubles. This, too, pleases me. 😈

Happy Saturday, murderers.

On the Giants and Mammoths (08-18-2021)Edit

I wanted the Giants to give you the same sense of awe from when you were a kid and you saw your parents walking around. I gave him large, weathered hands and a somewhat tired expression. I did not want the player attacking them because they looked "aggressive" or monstrous. I wanted them to look like gentle shepherds who lived for 200+ years and slept under the stars.

I did the same for their Mammoths, too: I gave them dirt-encrusted feet and a faint white speckle of saliva at the corners of their mouths (like you see in elephants at the zoo) because I wanted you to feel their realness and their grandeur and that "Oh WOW" sort of presence when they were nearby.

I hope they conveyed that sense!

On his Shivering Isles models making their way into Skyrim via the Creation Club (10-29-2021)Edit

This is wild - my Shivering Isles armor somehow made it into Skyrim??

The Madness, Amber, Dark Seducer & Golden Saint armors were some of my *very first* assignments at Bethesda. I don't even think they rebuilt them... honestly think they just re-used my work! Why??

Huh, why do you think that's weird mayne?

Because I was like 6 months into my first job, you'd think they would have found someone better to remake em!

On contributions to Skyrim (11-11-2011)Edit

People often ask me what, exactly, I made for Skyrim, so - for Skyrim’s 10-year anniversary - here’s my near-definitive list, once and for all:

-The Dragons: Vanilla, Elder, Blood, Ancient, Paarthurnax, Ohdaviing, & the Dragon skeletons
-The Draugr, male & female
-The Giants
-The Mammoth
-The Dragon Priests & staff
-The Trolls & their skulls
-The Spriggan
-The Horkers
-The Skeletons
-Arvak
-The Ancient Nord Armor (as worn by Aela the Huntress)
-The Dragonbone Armor
-The Dragonscale Armor
-The Dragon Priest Masks
-The Helm of Yngol
-The Nightingale bow
-The Sanguine Rose
-The Wabbajack
-The Circlets
-The Jagged Crown
-The Whalebone bridge
-and the wee lil Torchbug!

I had a blast working on this game, and I absolutely loved my team. Thank you to all of you for your support and the love you’ve shown to the game AND to its creators… it means more than we can say. ❤️

On Alduin's Wall (11-26-2021)Edit

When we were designing the trailer for Skyrim, the company we contracted to design the moving wall of Alduin just weren’t… getting it. So I was tapped to quickly generate a preview of what we were looking for, and I created this. The idea was to create a large stone relief - dark and mysterious - that would serve as a template for the entirety of Alduin’s wall.

2022Edit

On the Skeletons of Skyrim (04-08-2022)Edit

I love it when science and art meet.

I built the skeletons from Skyrim to have thick, sloping brows and big teeth/jaws. I did not want them to look pale and delicate and breakable like real skeletons; I wanted them to look intimidating (without giving them silly cartoonish meany-eyes), like ancient Neanderthals, thicc enough to take a hit, maybe a little brain damage, and just keep on going.

Now, a global group of students have used genetic anthropology to help reimagine what the Skyrim skeletons might have looked like. As someone who probably took way too long studying real human skulls to make a game character, I’m absolutely thrilled that this happened. Honestly, it really does look like the default Nord, baked in the ugly oven for a few extra minutes. I feel so vindicated!

2023Edit

How were the Dragon Priests added to Skyrim? (11-13-2024)Edit

There were never any plans to add these masks into the game, although [Joel Burgess] really wanted to create a set of special Dragon Priests for the world. I was very busy, as I usually was, but he kept bringing up the idea around me, and eventually I got to thinking about it.

Inspired by the Ordinator masks from Morrowind (my first Bethesda gaming experience), I used a mask that I own from West Africa as a reference, and I spent a few days creating the different Dragon Priest masks, each one borrowing from a particular material found in the world of Tamriel (steel, iron, corondum, ebony, etc). The wooden one was the first I made. From there, Joel created the time-warp questline and added magic effects, etc.

So if you are wondering why there are no dialogue options or formal questlines for the entire Dragon Priest mask collection, well now you know!

2024Edit

On the wooden Dragon Priest Mask (01-21-2024)Edit

As the actual creator of the Dragon Priest Masks, this wooden one was the first one I created, and we liked the idea of making the most important one (ie the time traveling one) the most common and base in appearance and value!

On the Dragonscale Armor (01-29-2024)Edit

Dragonscale Armor from Skyrim was so much fun. As everyone knows, I love organic design, and the chance to create fantasy armor out of dragon parts was just too good an opportunity to pass up.

I didn’t want this to look so high fantasy as to be unrealistic - too many fantasy designs take these ideas to their extreme, using entire skulls as shoulder-pads, etc. Rather, I wanted it to feel as if a real blacksmith had spent hours sawing off choice pieces of dragon-plate and dragon-scale, curing it, shaping it, and ultimately girding it in steel. This is Skyrim, so it can’t be too elegant, but despite its rough appearance overall, I wanted it to look priceless in its manufacture and originality, as well as expertly designed, and I wanted it to look lighter than the Dragonbone armor!