In 2021 I had the pleasure of designing several different assets for AWS Game Tech through Indigo Slate. Game Tech offers a large number of services during the game development process, so a large part of my job was explaining these sectors in fun visuals. One of the goals was to compose several of the different services into one image while hinting at the video game industry.
Since Mario is one of the most classic games out there, I built the structure of the main banner image around Super Mario World. While I never owned the game, I fell in love with the style and world map as a kid. There was something so enticing about the visuals - all the platforms, secret areas, and adventure! The basement area mimics a lot of those caves and secret areas with a few of the backend features AWS offers, such as server scalability, identity protection, and machine learning. The player can move around these different areas as needed with different stages or products they can choose from or skip. It's building your own adventure.
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Software Used
- Cinema 4d
- Rizom UV
- Substance Designer
- Substance Painter
- Adobe Photoshop
- Redshift
The remainder of the visuals were used for social media posts or AWS' digital publication. The first visual I ever worked for Gametech illustrated their Anti-Cheat feature. The designers at Indigo did an incredible job at concepting out the idea with player pieces moving along a conveyor belt thru a metal detection system. The players were to remain anonymous until after they passed thru the system but we didn't want it to look like random players were being rejected either. That's when the board game clue came to mind; It was my favorite board game growing up because it was a perfect blend of mystery, problem solving, and of course in my family, a little bit of cheating too (at least with me and my brothers). I placed the different "tools" from that game next to the cheater along with a few other references from the game.
One of my other favorite pieces from the social posts was the super fans image. The concept sketches only featured robotic frames with foam fingers waving around. The brief also mentioned incorporating UI elements from Twitch (Amazon owns Twitch in case you didn't know like me at the time). In my mind, foam fingers and mid-west catholic church carnivals go hand-in-hand as I spent many days hitting up all the different venues for fun. The scene was perfect to model after the good old fashioned BB gun rifle shooter games. This of course is contrasted with the soft, foam, cushions. Walls are lined with foam pool noodles and the pillow prizes are modeled after Twitch's badges
