The Man Behind The Guns Of Jackie Estacado

You may not recognize the name Yaron, but it's very likely you have held his digital creations in your virtual hands a number of times. Yaron, more commonly known as Lone Wolf around the internet, is a freelance hard surface modeling specialist who has worked on titles like Killzone 2, Saints Row, Section 8, and most recently Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. He is known for his guns, and he has made lots of them. His latest venture is working with Digital Extremes on The Darkness II. The majority of the guns you will be shooting at enemies and monsters as Jackie Estacado in the upcoming game have been lovingly crafted by Yaron from his home in Jerusalem, Israel.

Yaron is the kind of designer who likes to model digital Transformers for fun in his free time, and he figured it out all from scratch. Yaron began creating weapon models for his Counter-Strike friends 10 years ago. He got the attention of the Counter-Strike community, and eventually the attention of game developers. A small gaming company called Pumpkin Effect reached out to hire him for some work, and soon others did as well. Now Yaron works full time as a freelance gun designer for, quite literally, the biggest video games in the world.

In The Darkness, guns aren’t your only weapons. You also use the Demon Arms, the tentacle-like appendages that allow Jackie to perform amazing feats of violence. Yaron is taking steps to make sure that the guns can compete visually. Yaron said, “I made sure that the guns will stick out, and be very clear in passing that feeling to the guy who holds it, keeping a clean texture and a beefy model. I made sure to keep the focus on that and not add too much wear, damage, colors or things like that.”

You’ll find the standard collection of gun types like handguns, submachine guns, shotguns and assault rifles in The Darkness II, but Yaron’s favorite are Jackie’s dual pistols. “It is my favorite pistol and I like it best from all the next gen stuff I did till now – I even printed it and put it on my wall.”

Yaron wasn’t aware of the comic book series before taking on his work with The Darkness, but has been enjoying the work. Typically he creates realistic guns, so working in a comic book setting where this a little more room for creativity has been rewarding. He receives the concepts from the developers, but it is Yaron’s job to create the weapons from there, and everyone is pleased. "You gotta admit those guns catch your attention right away even if you're not a gun fanatic," Yaron says. “The engravings give a really cool style that fits perfectly to the character's personality, giving the dark and mysterious feel, yet realistic and elegant in the same time. I liked it so much that it inspired me to make another one for myself!”

Yaron has been designing weapons for video games for ten years and hopes to move closer to the industry when the opportunity allows. His tenure as a freelance modeler will allow him to obtain a working visa soon, so will be able to work outside of Jerusalem.

The Darkness II will be releasing in February of next year.

For more of Yaron’s work, be sure to check out lonewolf3d.com.