2016 ~ 2022
Choices: Stories You Play

Choices was more of a Netflix-like platform than a game, which hosts hundreds of interactive stories for users to consume.  From a small handful of artist to a larger, but lean and powerful team, this app explored countless genres, themes, and rendering styles.  It was indeed an artist’s paradise, where they can illustrate a fantasy world, then a Jane Austin era, then a sci-fi universe, then a superhero comic, all within a year.  This app remains the high grossing leader of its genre, pumping out massive contents each release, in a well-oiled production pipeline.

With a small team of experienced artists, I directed the visual development and advancements over the years.  On production side, I orchestrated the artistic training and art pipeline flow that maintained a multi-production, massive output that continued even today.  The Art Direction/Management page (WIP) will describe more on the managerial practices.  Below displayed past hands-on artwork and direction examples.  Consider every example is multiplied by the hundreds to thousands over 6 years efforts.

Characters

Art directed with notes, sketches, and mods to perfect anatomy and appeals, bringing hundreds of Choices character and fashion from good to exceptional. 

Backgrounds

The narrative requires the backgrounds to show various rooms and details.  Left and right sides are used as two separate scenes.  We creatively plotted out space and depth in x, y, and z axises.  And we stretched perspectives and lens to meet various needs.  The storytelling in our backgrounds were what made Choices engaging and unique.  Rinse, repeat and make them quick!

Miscellaneous Artworks I Made

One of the book needed a dragon, I created it to demonstrate the extreme cases on how to strategically pack in a large creature’s prominent features like large horns, long curled necks, as well as head movements for different expressions inside the limited bounding box.

Book Covers

Book covers are window to each story.  With a single image, the readers will decided whether they want to invest time into this book or not.  Each image is a make-or-break situation.  These are some speedy creatives I produced for a few covers.  

Style Guides, Templates, UI's, Wireframes

I put together thorough and instructive style guides in order to train and unify rendering styles at a high quality bar among the internal and outsource artists, and introduce color branding processes to enhance the immersive experiences.  

Along the years there were many updates to content features and UI redesigns, which requires countless templates to be made.  I have also designed internal character builder tool.  Aside from making the lo-fi wireframe below, I also set up templates, rules, graphics, and process for assets to become interchangeable.  

2019 - Tecent's 1001 / 一零零一

We worked closely with Tencent in China on their interactive novel app, 1001, as in One Thousand and One Nights.  The biggest challenge is hitting the correct anime style for everything from character faces and outfits to backgrounds, cutscenes, and so on.

1001 Misc. Style Guides, Templates, UI, Icons, etc.

These are just some miscellaneous images showing good processes collaborating with Tencent China and our outsource vendors.  

The top image demonstrated clear style setting and good communication, aligning everyone’s visual expectations.  

Left image shows how I created a recipe converting any image into anime/otome backgrounds.  

Multilingual Graphic Design

Due to some unforeseen time constraints, I wrote some of the Chinese copies ahead of Tencent.  By knowing the language, I could also properly decorate and highlight the texts and lay them out properly on an image.

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