Xenomurf Games
As the Art Director, Art Producer, Brand Manager, Graphic Designer, UI/UX designer, and active Creative Director for this start-up's first-ever video game, I had my work cut out for me.
Scope + Responsibilities
Brand Identity Exploration + Design
Typography + Font Design
Iconography + Illustrations
Story Writing + Development
Website Design + Development
Creative Direction
Brand Toolkit
Game UX/UI Design
Social Media Management
Character Development + Creation
Poster Concept + Design
Animation Direction
Interviewing + Hiring
Research + Presentation
Creative Problem Solving
Marketing Strategy + Planning
Brand Identity Exploration + Design
Building a successful brand comes from understanding the core principles guiding the company. With Xenomurf, my first task was to discover who they were and who they wanted to become. I began by researching and exploring the company’s culture, goals, and aspirations. From there, everything fell into place. We landed on a logo and logotype that are whimsical, memorable, and iconically powerful.
Employee Branding
The finalized company logo was inspired by crop circles. With that in mind, I designed a series of icons for each founder based on their initials.
Employee Branding
The finalized company logo was inspired by crop circles. With that in mind, I designed a series of icons for each founder based on their initials.
Employee Branding
The finalized company logo was inspired by crop circles. With that in mind, I designed a series of icons for each founder based on their initials.
Art Direction + Production
Building the Art Department from the ground up began with finding artists and animators far more talented than myself. Once I did, I directed them to help create my unique vision for the game.
Meet My Team
After countless hours of pouring over portfolios and interviewing over 200 artists and animators, I found my team. I was privileged to hire some of the most talented creatives, from the enthusiastic rookie to the experienced powerhouse.
Lead Concept Artist
Character Designer
Character Designer
Character Designer
Lead Animator
2D Animator
Character Designer
Environmental Artist
Art Exploration + Production
Managing and directing an amazing group of artists is a challenging task, but there is no better feeling than coming together as a creative force and watching our ideas become reality.
Creative Direction
As head of the entire visual department, I wore every creative hat imaginable. Creative direction, not just for the game, but the entire company, was squarely in my hands.
Web Design + Development
After interviewing, hiring, and managing my talented team of artists, I still had all of the company's visual responsibilities to deal with. So, I decided this was a good time to reacquaint myself with hand-coding web development, so I could create a simple, yet effective digital home base.
Shaping and Enhancing a Vision
Visualizing and organizing the entirety of the game writer's vision was an enormous undertaking. This led to me completely rewrite some of the story elements to better fit the video game structure. I made it my own in many ways. Here are a few.
Karl the Candy Corn
Karl was 100% based on my desire to have an adorable, charismatic, fun-loving, homicidal character to help out our hero in a pinch.
I had a blast writing his backstory and deciding how I would fit him into the game mechanics. Karl is the last Candy Corn of his kind, born of the original magical recipe that is now sadly lost, leaving behind garbage imitations. Karl has devoted his life to hunting down and destroying them all, and whatever other evil lies in his path. I illustrated him based on my original sketch and love the little guy to pieces.
No Zombies!!!
Our writer didn't have ideas for the graveyard minions…but he made one thing clear: absolutely NO ZOMBIES! So was born my idea of animating together common graveyard findings, refuse, and carcasses into odd creatures, some that might resemble alien things seen at the nearby drive-in.
Nostalgia Reimagined
Since this is a throwback nostalgic game, I thought it fitting to sprinkle in some influences from my own past. From undead Hungry Hungry Hippos to Peanuts + Pac-Man ghostly mashups. And of course, those classic, plastic 80s masks — Lucy's witch, Sleestaks, They Live, Cylons, Purple Pie Man, Admiral Ackbar, and more.
Corn smut is a foul-looking fungus that grows on corn and is considered a delicacy by some. And while it isn't nostalgic for me, when I learned about it while creating corn creatures, incorporating it was a no-brainer.
Karl the Candy Corn
Karl was 100% based on my desire to have an adorable, charismatic, fun-loving, homicidal character to help out our hero in a pinch.
I had a blast writing his backstory and deciding how I would fit him into the game mechanics. Karl is the last Candy Corn of his kind, born of the original magical recipe that is now sadly lost, leaving behind garbage imitations. Karl has devoted his life to hunting down and destroying them all, and whatever other evil lies in his path. I illustrated him based on my original sketch and love the little guy to pieces.
No Zombies!!!
Our writer didn't have ideas for the graveyard minions…but he made one thing clear: absolutely NO ZOMBIES! So was born my idea of animating together common graveyard findings, refuse, and carcasses into odd creatures, some that might resemble alien things seen at the nearby drive-in.
Nostalgia Reimagined
Since this is a throwback nostalgic game, I thought it fitting to sprinkle in some influences from my own past. From undead Hungry Hungry Hippos to Peanuts + Pac-Man ghostly mashups. And of course, those classic, plastic 80s masks — Lucy's witch, Sleestaks, They Live, Cylons, Purple Pie Man, Admiral Ackbar, and more.
Corn smut is a foul-looking fungus that grows on corn and is considered a delicacy by some. And while it isn't nostalgic for me, when I learned about it while creating corn creatures, incorporating it was a no-brainer.
Social Media Strategy + Management + Production
The public presence of a company is vitally important. With this game, I formulated a timeline to showcase milestones of our progress as well as sprinkling in more random, fun, and humorous pieces of art. Sometimes, like shown here, the work from my artists wasn't exactly complete, and I had to take over.
