VISUAL DESIGN OVERHAUL
The Double Jump brand & story was dystopian, adventurous, and mechanical - full of steampunk blimps sailing in the air, plasma tiles to jump on, and fiery lanterns to light the way at dusk amongst dilapidated buildings on mountains.
The Double Jump brand & story was dystopian, adventurous, and mechanical - full of steampunk blimps sailing in the air, plasma tiles to jump on, and fiery lanterns to light the way at dusk amongst dilapidated buildings on mountains.
For the visual design overhaul, I crafted a more intricate lore, revised all characters to fit the lore (they were now human-robot), and worked with a third party advisor to create 3 distinct art kits for the 3 different environments. We adhered to a strict color palette for each map to ensure visual consistency, using a bold narrow sans serif font to create an action-packed feel. We also designed scraggly button banners and revamped the logo to give it a mechanical, dystopian vibe.
We had a total of 20 game maps and dispersed them evenly throughout the 3 kits. With our mockup images of our new art style, we once again surveyed our Discord community to see what they thought - we were met with positive reviews, so we decided to move forward with the implementation.
We hired an in-house 3D artist and a VFX designer for the team that I was leading. Working with them, I came up with a 2-month long comprehensive plan to replace every single 3D asset in the game with a new and improved asset. I documented each map’s obstacles and illustrated how they would look within the parameters of the new art styles. I also studied each game map and conjured up a list of 40 VFXs that were necessary to bring the game up to a more “realistic” level - this included plasma, fire, jumping effects, punch effects, footsteps, etc. Using Jira, we implemented agile workstreams so that the art could be incorporated efficiently by the level designers and our VFXs could be implemented by our developers.
- Art Kit 1 was during my favorite hour of the day - golden hour, with an orange tint over the world, desert landscape, and steampunk obstacles.
- Art Kit 2 was our daylight kit - mid-day lighting, with a lush green landscape, Zhangjiajie-inspired tall craggy mountains, and floating plasma balls intermixed with glass platforms.
- Art Kit 3 was our nighttime kit - purple haze during dusk, lit up by lanterns and ember posts, with metal buildings built on the side of dome-like mountains.
We had a total of 20 game maps and dispersed them evenly throughout the 3 kits. With our mockup images of our new art style, we once again surveyed our Discord community to see what they thought - we were met with positive reviews, so we decided to move forward with the implementation.
We hired an in-house 3D artist and a VFX designer for the team that I was leading. Working with them, I came up with a 2-month long comprehensive plan to replace every single 3D asset in the game with a new and improved asset. I documented each map’s obstacles and illustrated how they would look within the parameters of the new art styles. I also studied each game map and conjured up a list of 40 VFXs that were necessary to bring the game up to a more “realistic” level - this included plasma, fire, jumping effects, punch effects, footsteps, etc. Using Jira, we implemented agile workstreams so that the art could be incorporated efficiently by the level designers and our VFXs could be implemented by our developers.