MARATHON TRAILER 2025
NEON HORROR
When EDGLRD reached out to bring me onto this sequence, I knew right away it was a rare kind of project. Working alongside Creative Director Sam Goldwater, we dug into a wide range of visual ideas together, from montage rhythm to the deconstruction and reconstruction sequences that became the emotional core of this piece. Seeing it all brought to life by animator Alejandro Robledo Mejia was the kind of collaboration that reminds you why you love this work.
The core problem to solve: how do you create horror within a brand built on vibrant, neon color? Traditional horror leans on shadow and desaturation, and a few of our early directions did go there, full darkness, but the versions that stuck with us pushed the opposite way. We found dread not in the absence of color but in its excess: skin behaving like liquid plastic, saturation cranked past comfort, bodies folding wrong inside light that should feel safe. That tension shaped much of what's in this case study.
Many thanks to Yates Holley, who brought me in to help design this sequence. I'm grateful for the opportunity.
COPYRIGHT © BUNGIE 2025
RESPAWN SEQUENCE
DEATH
THE VISUAL NARRATIVE
Medic is hit. The light dims from his eyes, mouth agape, body twitching. Slick black arms rise like an ocean wave, grabbing, pulling. Close on his face as he looks into the camera; skin peels and unfurls as past lives drag him beneath the surface. Darkness.
CONCEPT: RESPAWN NIGHTMARE
CLIENT: BUNGIE - MARATHON
STUDIO: EDGLRD
DIRECTOR: HARMONY KORINE
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: SAM GOLDWATER
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR: YATES HOLLEY
DESIGNER / CONCEPT / MOTION TESTS: JOSH CHILDERS
HOUDINI ANIMATION: ALEJANDRO ROBLEDO MEJÍAA
PRODUCTION DESIGN FRAMES
DECONSTRUCTION
VISUAL NARRATIVE
Medic's shell doesn't die quietly. It peels.
His shell tears like wet plastic, skin melting back in ribbons as his face folds into liquid before it can scream, collapsing into a total void, the crushing nothing of a black hole, before reversing, flesh folding back into shape, wrong before it's right, until his eyes tear open in a new body.
New shell. Same war.
RECONSTRUCTION
ALTERNATE VARIATIONS
RANDOM SELECTS
