WIRE was a Sci-Fi RPG from my time at Digimancy Entertainment. I handled the original pitch concepts and came on as art director when funding was secured. We were working with an established space IP from the publisher's portfolio. Our task was to combine the overworld gameplay of 'Mount and Blade' and feel of 'The Expanse' in a narratively driven 20 hour experience with a 2 year development timeline. Our targeted platforms were 4th and 5th generation consoles and PC.
Nate A
Alex B
Ben Z
Alex B, Nate A
The art team was comprised of 10 people:
Nick Miller - 3D Lead
Sterling Reames - Tech Animation
Ben Zweifel - Concept Artist/2D Lead
Alex Brady - Contract Concept Art
Ben Bryant - Concept Art
Robert Croft - Principle UI/UX
Danylo Hoshko - Tech Art
Hector M. Gómez - 3D Artist
Dan Conroy - 3D Artist
Each brought a wonderful energy and specific expertise to the development. I've credited each where relevant to the work.
I like to understand the widest possible spectrum of emotional response the visuals need to evoke in the player as soon as I can so I planned our first milestone delivery as a visual pillars document. We spent several sprints exploring the corners of this universe, working closely with narrative and the game director to dial in look and feel.
Nick Miller - 3D Lead
Sterling Reames - Tech Animation
Ben Zweifel - Concept Artist/2D Lead
Alex Brady - Contract Concept Art
Ben Bryant - Concept Art
Robert Croft - Principle UI/UX
Danylo Hoshko - Tech Art
Hector M. Gómez - 3D Artist
Dan Conroy - 3D Artist
Each brought a wonderful energy and specific expertise to the development. I've credited each where relevant to the work.
I like to understand the widest possible spectrum of emotional response the visuals need to evoke in the player as soon as I can so I planned our first milestone delivery as a visual pillars document. We spent several sprints exploring the corners of this universe, working closely with narrative and the game director to dial in look and feel.
Alex B
Alex B
Alex B
Alex B
Alex B
Ben Z
Nate A, Ben Z
Alex B
Alex B
The game director and publisher both wanted us to develop some very weird and scary entities and places and Alex did a fantastic job here. The sketches below are an example of sketches from a brainstorm meeting we had to spur possibilities. The final image from that meeting were so unique I planned to leverage them in our branding had we gotten that far. The lower animation was the endgame sun, we wanted it to be able to toggle on and off mysteriously and Alex put together this animation and the game director, myself and the publisher loved it.
Nate A, Alex B
Alex B
Characters, as ship and station captains, were a critical piece of the art puzzle. I worked with narrative and the game director to establish 4 human factions, several new alien ones as well as a faction of intelligent Orcas. This was part of our second deliverable: the 'Faction Visual Guide'. Alex, Ben Z and Ben B, Nick and Hector and I worked diligently to establish a 3D pipeline for portraits that would support all the captain portraits we would need. Below are the sketches I did and the wonderful finals Ben Z created from them and a very early sketch I did of a captain.
Ben Z
Ben Z
Ben Z
Ben Z
Nate A
Nate A
Sketches of clothing for each faction and one jumpsuit from Nick M followed by some alien concepts and the orca space marine painting that the team loved.
Ben Z, Ben B, Nate A
Nick M
Ben Z
Ben Z
Alex B, Nate A
Stations, and Points of Interest in general, needed to work for our top down camera angle as well as for in game illustrations, of which many were planned. Each station had a backstory and several were to evolve based on player decisions and plot progression. Scale was a major consideration and we planned to leverage modular station construction to be able to build a wide variety of stations quickly.
Ben B
Nate A
Ben Z, Nate A
Nate A
Ben B, Ben Z, Nick M
Ben B, Ben Z, Nick M
Examples of station sketches and shape exploration per each of our factions.
Nate A, Ben Z
Nate A, Ben Z
Nate A
We did a lot of research and development to understand how our 'Mount and Blade' overworld movement system was going to work. We established many look dev shots of game play spaces and thought deeply about the issues of boundaries and visual layering. Ben Z did a great job concepting here.
Ben Z
Ben Z
Ben Z
Ben Z
Ben Z
Ben Z
Ben Z
Ben Z
Ben B
We spent many cycles solving the issue of not having a ground plane and making sure scale read correctly for astral bodies. Ben Z's work here was indispensable.
Ben Z
Ben Z
Ben Z
Camera position and player location feedback was a complex issue the whole team shared in solving. Below are examples of a sketch I did to demonstrate a scanning range finding laser that would turn on when the player ship was reaching a boundary or collidable. It would only appear when the player was nearby a boundary and be entirely diagetic. We were cancelled before this could be implemented but I feel it is a good example of how I problem solve and communicate on difficult issues.
Ben Z, Nate A
Nate A
Here are examples of our most final concepts for the map with UI/UX. Robert did a great job here. For UI specifically I wanted something elegant and reminiscent of the original IP that also felt diegetic to a near future Sci-Fi setting. Robert correctly advocated for moving as much of the visual data as possible from the overworld map onto the UI to make the ships themselves as cheap as possible.
Ben Z, Robert C
Ben Z, Robert C
Ship's were in essence our main characters and needed to capture a sense of visual progression and player customization. Nick, Ben Z and I thought extensively about modules and silhouette, turret aiming, realism, faction identification, visual threat and camera angle. The ships were large on screen in both combat and when editing loadouts and very small on the overworld layer adding a lot of demands to their implementation.
Ben Z
Ben Z, Nate A
Alex B
Ben Z, Nate A
Some concepts from Ben Z exploring one of the faction's ship silhouette.
An example of a rough model sketch and the resulting more polished sketch for another ship.
Nate A
Nate A, Ben Z
Our combat went through many iterations but ultimately became a turn-based experience in the vein of Slay the Spire. Sterling's deep understanding of tech animation within Unity, Robert's UI and UX work and Ben Z's previs paintings set us up for success here. It was on it's way to being visceral and shown off our ships wonderfully.
Ben Z
Ben Z
Sterling R, Ben Z, Robert C
Here's an example of gameplay from late in the development. Much of this was still placeholder but the overall experience is beginning to solidify and I was very happy with the team's work.