Hi folks!Some of you know me as that (formally
) bearded scrub with unbelievable talents in crashing ships or the helpful service provider documenting feedback, bugs and all other sorts of shenanigans! Either way the name is Mikko and I'm one of the team members with community management (you know, the unsung heros that keep the sanity together and bridge the gap between game communities and dev teams), and being apart of community management entails a lot of various roles and tasks. Among them, the privilege of working with organisers whom put together events for the community at large!
Along with handling background administrative tasks, I also assist the art team and the organisers with graphics used for event banners, forum graphics, badges, and pretty much anything else that needs doing. Here's a sample of what I've gotten involved with in the past:
Concepts (Blood & Brass Royale):I first had to sit down with designs emblematic of the event, I'd go through a few different designs with the chief organisers with a few iterations before we settle on suitable concept to build on. Here's a example set from the 'Blood & Brass' event that was hosted (I used white or grey backgrounds for better clarity):
Once the base design was approved I moved on to providing a more fleshed out design with variations depending on their use (in-game event banners, forum icons, newsletters, etc.)
I ensured the format could be used on any background (hence the alpha channel) and packed it together in a psd that streamers and casters could use when they decorated their framing of the footage.
Badges:The same process applies for badges, once I have the final design approved by both the organiser and the Art Director I finalise the work with a line drawing...
...that is translated to a depth map...
... and finished off as what you see in the game today.
Over time I've learned to approach design in various ways for each successive event, here's more concepts & alternative designs for each event, I tend to play a lot with some various designs before organisers settle on one they like:
Cronus League:
This is the finalised design used for the event:
The same process was used for the badges, some of the designs you might recognise in other work I've done:
This took an interesting turn since the design got too complex to fit in a small area for in-game use (150x150 px) so I learned to pull back on the detail and focus on simpler but readable designs:
The final design was approved and polish work began with cleaning up line placement and finally a depth mapping to give it dimension:
With collaboration we produce the final design for in-game use:
When designs are ultimately not used I can sometimes find other uses for them with the right augmentations. Look familiar?
Seven Deadly Ships:Event icon:
Some proposed designs on how the banner for the event should look (ultimately settling on the bottom one):
Big Brass Revival:I've done plenty of designs leading up to this point for the game for various functions, but since I'm mostly focusing on event content, we come finally to 'The Big Brass Revival' event. I had fun working on these designs since I wanted it to harken back to the 'Blood & Brass: Royale' event but stand on its own with a unique design. I've forwarded these to the organisers who settled on the last one for the official logo.
Since I like to recycle these designs for other functions I decided to take the other design and slip that in for the in-game event banner logo:
If you made it this far:Thanks a bunch for taking the time to check out this small gallery of work! I've been really fortunate to have the privilege and opportunity to work with you players making these designs for events while also providing neat badges that participants can carry around to show off. I've really enjoyed developing these skills and to later see the fruits of that labour on forums and in-game.
If you have any questions or comments (I might be slow to respond) feel free to leave them below, clear skies!
