Macabre News

Jake Davey and I have been wearing many hats for the past year. Everything from producing to design, narrative and art has fallen under us. But today, we can announce veteran VFX & Concept artist Jake Hempson will be taking the reigns of Art Director. Here's what he had to say.

Soooo… an industry veteran ehy? (yes, yes, I have been around the block). I'm a bit of a mixed bag. I originally studied graphic design in South Africa, then moved to the UK, aiming to get into comics illustration/concept art. I wound up teaching myself 3D/animation, working on the “Aliens vs Predator” game for Rebellion. Several games later, I came to OZ and worked for Krome Studios in Brisbane. Eventually, I transitioned into a 3D generalist for VFX/TVC working at Cutting Edge where I first met Jay.

A few years and several films later, I reconnected with Jay and was excited to learn he'd been working on a multiplayer horror game (Macabre). I wanted in as I love horror and creature design as well as some of the nerd-core sci-tech aesthetics we have in mind (more on that later).



Soooo… The several games/films later part includes (aside from my stealing sponge bob quotes):

Aliens Versus Predator (2000) - game
Concept design and character modelling.

Starsky & Hutch (2003) - Game
Lead artist.

Ty3 the Tasmanian Tiger: Night of the Quinkan (2005) - Game
Cutscene Animations.

Megamind: Mega Team Unite (2010) - Game
Character design Character Lead.

Red Billabong (2014) - Film
Creature Design.

Thor Ragnarok (2016, Marvel) - Film
Concept design, prop/set design.

Shang Chi (2020, Marvel) - Film
Concept design, prop/set design

Occupation Rainfall (2021) - Film
Concept design/Art Direction Modeling and look dev

The Portable Door ( 2021 unreleased) - Film
Creature sculpt

Allen (2021, Netflix, unreleased) - Film
Creature design/ sculpt

I'm really excited to join WeForge on this project, as I want to push myself and move more into Art Direction. Macabre offers me an opportunity to express my passion for horror, design and games, and the role ties in with my previous experience in multiple other areas of digital art production.

—Jake Hempson



We're equally as excited to have Jake H officially join our team. His background and expertise are truly going to elevate Macabre, helping us realise our vision of taking the horror genre to new places.



You can view Jake's recent work on his portfolio and his "random doodles" on his insta.

For as long as we can remember, Jake Davey and I have had a great fondness for video games. It's actually how we met, playing the Arma 2 mod Wasteland (for those of you who remember). We formed a group of friends and would jump on after Uni/work almost every day and play games like Dayz mod, Dota 2, Rust, Hunt Showdown, The forest and Escape from Tarkov. Little did we know, we'd both end up moving to Sydney and becoming good mates in the real world.


While I was focused on building a career in directing, Jake was building his in Audio. We always talked about how cool it would be to make our own game, but it wasn't until about 12 months ago that we started taking it seriously. We realised our respective careers and mutual love for video games was the perfect foundation to make our own.

We knew we wanted to create something different with Macabre, to step outside the typical haunted house or abandoned asylum and instead explore new territory. We also wanted monsters that are scary smart, that felt alive - not just mindless grunts that kill on sight. It's all about creating a unique, immersive horror experience set in a world players haven't explored before, and boy, do we have some cool stuff in store!





Funnily enough, I'm an absolute scaredy cat with it comes to horror, but just like with watching scary movies, it's so much more fun with friends. Not to mention multiplayer horror opens up so many avenues. You can work together, but you can also mess with each other, which makes for a lot of hilarious scenarios.


We reached out to my former colleague Maximilian Rea who had embarked on a similar journey around five years earlier to create his dream game Hell Let Loose. Max has been gracious enough to mentor us through the process of building an indie studio and setting things up to succeed.


Over the next few months, we were lucky enough to begin working with some incredible artists who saw the same potential in Macabre that we did. Rythilian, who was a big part of the Rust modding community, helped us with our landscape and environment. Joshua Culp worked on our creature concept art which is terrifying, BTW. Ricardo Ciaxe did the 3D sculpt, and Morrissey Alexander, who has been building out our lodges and helping with hard surface modelling. We also were fortunate enough to meet Ben Sutherland, our incredibly talented and awesome programmer.


We're all working towards making Macabre the best it can be, and we can't wait to show you more of our progress!