The Game

Lucid’s Switchblade is an online multiplayer vehicle based, team combat game, with multiple arenas and vehicles. As part of their support for the game, Lucid planned to release new vehicles monthly.

Challenge

To turn the brief into game ready vehicles from a written description and mood boards into final production for in-game design.

Solution

To assemble a small, but skilled team for this project, including 1 concept artist, and 1 modelling/texture artists.  This would ensure visual continuity and conistency, and for the process and production of the task itself.

Process

• Lucid supplied a written brief describing the characteristics for each vehicle
• Our concept artist interpreted this and began drafting this into thumbnails for review
• The submission to our client provided options to decide which vehicles matched their vision enabling full control and flexibility to translate their vision into final design
• From this feedback our artists were able to develop a sheet of variations on the chosen design
• The design was finalised after another round of feedback where communication was key
• A 3D concept was built so that scaling proportions could be gauged
• Our concept artist then began colourised versions of the vehicle skins for approval  
• The final mesh was built by our 3D art department, with attention given to animating parts to ensure the vehicle could work as described, then adding texture to the model to recreate an accurate in game vehicle which matched each stage of the design brief
• Close collaboration with the client to understand and define their requirements was an important aspect in achieving the best possible outcome

Summary

We sourced and selected artists with the skills and experience to best meet the requirements of our client

Once the initial concept period was concluded, and with the project team in place, our project management skills enabled us to streamline processes so that the next vehicle was in concept stage, while the 3D artist was modelling the previous one.  This ensured our submissions were timely, and our client stayed on track.