Site layout is made for desktop screens, 1080p or more!
Check back in fullscreen!
This was my first experience with working on a project... while it's LIVE! Handling the graphics optimization and environment lightmapping for 4 platforms simultaneously taught me a thing or two about dilligence and care when pushing to subversion. It was taxing but equally rewarding.
Dead Cells
The Beheaded from Dead Cells was one of the guest characters that I got to work on. I was tasked with creating the head VFX (a nightmare in terms of displaying the bright cross on the smoke, but only from the front). I've made a set of shaders that had custom render orders and composed multiple layers of smoke and trails to give his head a nice floaty quality.
I was also tasked with composing and recording all of the gameplay footage for his reveal trailer, and contributed to the Dead Cells Prison stage with modeling, texturing and ambient animations.
Dead Cells Reveal Trailer
Variant Skins
When multiple players select the same character they need to be distinct so everyone knows who's who. Rather than doing a simple pallette swap, I tried to give each a more developed personality.
Skills
I did all of the skill iconography for all the characters and variants.
They all start with loose sketches on a pad, after which I trace and tweak digitally with the Pen tool.
Menus
A collab effort from the whole art team, we each contributed comps, graphics and icons to it. Due to the project's artstyle, it was a pretty straightforward task.
Playstation 4 Theme
One of the bonuses for Playstation preorders was a dynamic PS4 theme. With minimal documentation and just a basic HTML framework, I've managed to port the models with correct UVs and animations. It was a long trial-and-error process as the theme framework at the time could only process FBX files saved in ASCII, and each export setting fixed one thing but broke another. Worth it in the end, as it was one of the most advanced themes on the PS store.
The background effects were done with some transparent frames ping-ponging their opacity, overlaid above a static background image.
Achievements
Steam, Xbox and Playstation all got achievements icons of their own.
Cosmetics
The store was packed with stuff players could purchase or get by participation. I meticulously handled the prefab offsets so that each cosmetic fit each of the different characters.
Shows
Since Brawlout was a competitive platform fighter, it had quite a few appearances at shows like Super Smash Con, E3, Pax and Gamescom; compositing the banners to each booth spec usually fell on my plate.
I think it was the first time when the Desktop Publishing skills I learned in college actually came in handy.
Extras
From social media tidbits to exclusive offers and promos, to physical printables and stickers and more- putting a game out there entails all sorts of media spread around all sorts of channels.
Key Contributions
- created and edited backgrounds for stages
- made character skins for character Variants
- did the Dead Cells head VFX, fracture fx, props
- planned, recorded and edited Dead Cells trailer footage
- designed Skill, UI and Achievements iconography
- created piñatas and cosmetics for the in-game Store
- edited banners, cover art, store assets, capsules
- made a sizeable portion of the tournament banners
Creative 🖌
- managed Collision, Lightmapping and Light Probes for all environments, across all platforms
- performed optimization passes for Nintendo Switch compliance, texture and lightmapping adjustments
- optimized environments using Amplify Impostors, baking significant portions to textures, Graphics Profiling
- co-created the PS4 custom screen with animations, porting game content to Playstation framework
Technical 🛠
- came in while project was live, was onboarded and pushing work to main branch within the month
- adapted to existing art style, pipeline and workflows
- compiled documents and spreadsheets summarizing strategic decisions and noteworthy details from brainstorming sessions
- was in charge of batch editing and exporting- various cosmetics, UI elements, icons
- heavily tested gameplay and graphics throughout
Project 🖿
Software:
cutting room floor ✂
