"What's The Rush?" was the first ever project I worked on with Joey. He was looking for an artist would could understand who he was and his poetry, and turn that into art that his readers could relate to. I was up for the challenge!
I sent him initial sketches of my ideas to make sure I was the right one for the job and once those were approved I was given the creative freedom to illustrate whatever I thought would represent his poems.
We ended up using 40+ of my gestural illustrations in the book, and I was also asked to create the cover. I brought Joey's idea to life and helped him format the cover for printing. Many other projects came after the books release such as an audio book cover and a lyric video for a song based on the book.
"WHAT'S THE RUSH?"
TOOLS:
CLIENT: JOEY KIDNEY
DATE: OCT 2018 - OCY 2019
DESCRIPTION
OVERVIEW
In this project, I collaborated with another UX designer to reimagine what FromSoftware’s 2015 release ‘Bloodborne’ would look like as an indie title. Bloodborne is a video game that we feel is an important example of artistic risk-taking in the video game industry. The art style and UI in this project were heavily inspired by SuperGiant Games’ 2019 release ‘Hades’.
ROLE
I was responsible for UI design, character design, illustrating assets, animation, and producing the final prototype.
WEAPON SCREEN
In our opinion, the weapon menu system in the original Bloodborne is a bit unintuitive to the user. The weapon description and weapon statistics are separated on two different pages which is a system typically not seen in other games. As far as we know, this type of system seems to be unique to FromSoftware titles. We decided to try and combine the separate screens into one for our reimagined version without trying to clutter the interface. We decided to split the menu into three separate boxes with different information in each box. Our version stays quite true to the original game but just condenses and prioritizes the information the user will likely want to know.
LOW FIDELITY WIREFRAME
HIGH FIDELITY WIREFRAME
I used Procreate to illustrate all of the assets used for our final design. I recreated all of the icons, blood gems, weapons, etc. in a our chosen style using dark outlines and no blending to convey a cartoonish style. I used the original designs in Bloodborne as references.
DIALOGUE TEXT BOXES
The dialogue boxes that we designed were heavily inspired by the dialogue boxes from Hades. We decided that adding Messengers (the little zombie-like figures) creeping around the text box added more life to the UI without compromising readability.
SKETCHES
FINAL DESIGN
CHARACTER DESIGN
SKETCHES & ILLUSTRATIONS
I was responsible for creating the character art in our reimagining. I used Procreate and referenced both fan art and gameplay to design Eileen the Crow and Alfred. I also animated them within Procreate to make them more lively. Their art style was heavily influenced by the art in "Hades."
FINAL PRODUCT
The final illustrated assets and designs were brought together in After Effects and animated. Music, sound, and motion were all very important when creating the final prototype in order to make it feel as real as possible.
