Sailors' Bridge
My role: Art Director, 3D Generalist
The brief was to create a cruise ship simulator aimed at children, that balanced fun with realism.
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The challenge with this brief was marrying up the realism the client wanted to the stylisation that the target audience would prefer. I settled on an initial artistic direction of a lovely clay style look to fit both briefs.
The narrative problem
A key issue that kept coming back was the question of how we keep the
players emotionally engaged in a game where characters can't appear.
And how do we communicate the win/lose state to players?
The solution I came to was simple, add characters, and tell the story via
social media posts of guests reacting to what was happening. This
proved very popular with the client and our playtesters. (and provided the
ability to have self insert easter eggs!)
Concept
Once the issue of narrative communication had been solved I focused on leading the team of concept artists to designing artwork for the 15 interactives, from islands, to minigames. Ensuring a visual consistency and a tongue in cheek aesthetic.
I also worked with the UI/UX designers to create a simple and readable flow, for what was quite a complex game.
End result
To streamline the workflow for a tight time frame I worked with the modelling team to create assets whilst ideas were still being generated, and once the assets were made I integrated them to ensure the consistency and look I intended.
