Gene Kohler

This article is written from the Real Life point of view

Gene Kohler is an American video game character artist. He is a former Retro Studios employee artist who worked on Metroid Prime, alongside his brother Rick Kohler.

Metroid Prime[]

Kohler skinned Samus Aran's Suits (replacing Rodney Brunet's original model), including the Fusion Suit, her Beams, Gunship, and Morph Balls, as well as the Trooper Pirates and Flying Pirates. Kohler also modeled and skinned Kraid, who originally was planned to appear in Prime but cut due to time constraints.

He contributed to the development of Raven Blade for around six months prior to its cancellation, leading the modeling and skinning of the game's characters. On the game, he said: "It was a fantastic project to work on given that I favor working in the fantasy genre." ^[1] Subsequently, he was moved onto development of Metroid Prime. Kohler sent Todd Keller an email to share his Raven Blade work so that Keller could decide where he would best be placed. Initially, he was tasked with modeling the Parasites, types of War Wasps and the Morph Ball, but Keller was impressed enough with Kohler's prior work to entrust him with reskinning Brunet's Samus model to have a worn, scratched appearance with subdued colors.^[2]

Next, Kohler added small blue energy canisters to Samus's back, which were intended to link the Power Suit to the Morph Ball. These can be seen in an early screenshot released by IGN on February 22, 2002.^[3] Kohler recalled being informed by his brother Rick about the attacks on September 11, 2001. Although he considered staying home from work that day, he decided to go in, and did not leave until he finished creating the second Varia Suit model's blue canisters.^[2]

“	Gene and I worked together at Retro Studios modeling / texturing all of the characters and enemies for Metroid Prime. Gene is an awesome character artist especially when it comes to armor, character textures and hard surface modeling. The work Gene did on Samus' Suits and weapons is stunning.	„
—Mike Sneath on LinkedIn

He was later asked to recreate the entire model from scratch in a cleaner, more refined style, resulting in that which is seen in the final version of Metroid Prime. Because Retro Studios did not have a humanoid model to work from, Kohler used the original Brunet model to properly scale Samus to her skeleton.^[2]

According to Kohler, the art direction of Prime was very dark and "crude" compared to the final product, which can be seen in its earliest public images and FMV clips. In his opinion, Retro's strengths in art design and other areas convinced Nintendo to grant the studio use of the Metroid license. Despite working on Samus's model, he had no contact with or knowledge of Tomoyoshi Yamane or Chiharu Sakiyama, who were credited in Prime as supervisors of Samus's model.^[2]

He was interviewed by Shinesparkers in 2010 regarding his work on Prime. While stating he was proud of the game he and Retro Studios had produced, Kohler admitted he had not kept up with the Metroid series since he left the company. He also said that it took between four days to two weeks to finish modeling the average creature in Prime, and that the bosses, which were created by Mike Sneath, took even longer. At the time of the interview, he was also excited for Metroid: Other M.^[4]

Subsequent career[]

After completing Prime, Kohler left Retro to work at Microsoft on Mythica, which would itself be cancelled. Kohler was laid off, and left for Ensemble Studios, where he was the Art Lead for the campaign mode of Halo Wars and Age of Empires III. After this, Kohler was a Principal Character Artist at Robot Entertainment, designing characters for Orcs Must Die! and its first two sequels and Age of Empires Online. He is currently a Senior Character Artist at Epic Games.

ArtStation notes[]

“

I had the pleasure of modeling and texturing Samus Aran's various armor suits, her morph balls, and many creatures for Nintendo's/Retro Studio's Metroid Prime. I also textured her weapons and Gun ship. I worked with Andrew Jones, Chris Voellmann, and Todd Keller in posing Samus for a variety of marketing images... one of which appeared to be used for First4Figures statue!

All of the concepts and marketing final paint-overs for Metroid Prime were done by Andrew Jones.

Chris Voellmann modeled her arm cannons.

Art Director Todd Keller

„

—Gene Kohler, via ArtStation

Trivia[]

Kohler kept many of Andrew Jones' concepts for the characters he modeled.^[4]
Kohler recalled that the coffee pot at Retro Studios was always empty, and that he would play NFL Blitz and Ping Pong with his colleagues while the coffee brewed. He claimed to have won in matches against Sneath and Marco Thrush.^[4]
He is a veteran of the Gulf War, serving from 1988 to 1991 as a Cannon Crew Member.^[5]
Outside of game development, Kohler enjoys riding motorcycles and once went on a trip in Austin, Texas with Chris Voellmann. He also enjoys carp fishing and fantasy football.^[4]