Activision/Neversoft

For Guitar Hero: Metallica Mark Scott traveled to San Francisco in order to direct a photo shoot of Metallica’s stage gear. From amps and cables to guitar picks and drum kits, no piece was missed in documenting the gear that had to be faithfully reproduced by the Metallica instrument modeling team.

To accurately reproduce the dents and scratches in James Hetfield’s and Kirk Hammett’s guitars a mobile digitizing unit was used, the very same unit that scanned the bodies of Lars Ulrich and the other Metallica band members.

Not only did we have input from Metallica, but ESP guitars also had to approve the guitar models. Naturally, with Mark leading the charge, ESP had no complaints. Indeed they were quite amused at the customization process used in the Create-a-guitar module of Guitar Hero: Metallica’s Backstage section and encouraged us to experiment.