Art Direction - Shuffle Royale
I was in charge of creating a game pitch document of Shuffle Royale for the leadership team to review as a potential casual game that we considered developing.
This is the final image for the Shuffle Royale game pitch document.
Art Direction: For the Shuffle Royale game pitch, I began by laying out pages of the deck, #1 in rough thumbnail form. #2 I guided the art team (Kris Maslanka) to create a skyline image of the kingdoms in our game. #3 Color thumbnail, I guided the art team (Kris Maslanka) to a warm sunset color palette. #4 Thumbnail image of the logo concept. I wanted to show the protagonist in this game within the logo. #5 Art team (Alphonso Orozco) gave me several choices, this is the one I chose. #7 We explored a lot of different options for the Joker character, I helped guide this version of the character (Justin Williams) #6 as taller than the rest and holding the puppet (Ashley Lindsey, Justin Williams). #8 Skyline was modeled in 3D (Jason Southwick and Lyndon Asuncion) and painted (Steven Grice). Iterating on this work, I later used the skyline artwork in supporting kingdom character pages.
Shuffle Royale Gameplay Screen in the Pitch Deck
This is the final Heart Kingdom gameplay screen in the pitch deck.
Art Direction: #1 I create rough page layouts to convey my ideas to the artists (Jessica Burlage, Jason Southwick, Alphonso Orozco). I wanted to show a broken version of the hearts castle and then a restored version. #2 I use Snagit for screen captures and I make notes to the artists as we're working on finalizing the imagery. I noticed that the render quality was quite harsh and could see that the 2D artist was over weighting the occlusion information from the 3D model. We needed to tone it back a bit to soften the look. #3 I realized that we needed to fill in that space on the right so I asked for a floating balloon and possibly #4 a citizen character hanging on for dear life to add some humor. In the end we simplified this layout by removing the middle phone image showing the final castle and used it as the background instead.
Final Kingdom Backgrounds and Characters for Shuffle Royale
The final kingdom and character screens in the pitch deck.
Art Direction: #1 I guided the artists to create our characters in a Clash of Clans body style and proportions (Raquel Gonzalez, Justin Williams, Jessica Burlage, Ashley Lindsey, Marv Riley) with the idea that we were going to be marketing the game to a casual audience and that this formula has been very successful. The buildings were influenced by games like Boom Beach and Hay Day witch are overly simplified with small amounts of detail to add interest (Lyndon Asuncion, Jason Southwick). #2 Once we started putting the kingdoms together, I utilized the 3D art to create Kingdom pages, showing off the characters and citizens. #3 I use Snagit to make screen captures and I communicate with artists with word bubbles and arrows. Here I was noting that the tones weren't consistent. #4 I was working with the artist who was painting the citizen characters. I needed to make sure that they weren't going to be flat shaded (Alphonso Orozco).
Marketing Ad
When presenting game pitch documentation, I worked with Marketing and our art team to come up with realistic gameplay footage that would show our stakeholders what we were trying to create. I did this through a marketing ad promo, something that could be seen realistically by a potential customer. This is the layout that I thumbnailed early on and is seen here mid-way through the process with my notes to the artists.
This the final screen from the pitch deck that included video of mock gameplay.
Mock Gameplay Video
I art directed this video Ad. Credits: Tyler Thompson (video editing and animation), Kris Maslanka (storyboards), Andy McCulloch (UI art), Ben Kersten (audio), Alphonzo Orozco (UI art), Faith Price and Robert Adams (marketing feedback and concept).
