Guns Up! // Valkyrie Entertainment / Sony

 

I joined the Guns Up! team post PS4 launch as the sole UX/UI artist. 


I worked closely with design and our creative director when creating new screens and features to improve the user experience.

While I designed mainly using existing art I also had the opportunity to create assets that fit with the existing style.

 

I also collaborated with the engineering team for all UI implementation in Unity for screen layouts, button states, UI animation, and some in game animation indicators. I often used proprietary tools but mainly my work revolved aroud manipulating the built in Unity animation and layout tools.   

 

I was also responsible for creating promotional material, announcements, sales, and special events, new splash and loading screens, illustrations for new cards. Essentially any artwork that was not 3d in this game was essentially created or heavily edited by me. 


I worked on porting the game from the PS4 to the PC for our Steam launch, which required modifying existing functionality and working closely with the engineering team. I also created badges, wallpapers, emoticons, and store images for the Steam launch.

Below is a sample of some of my illustration and icon work for Guns Up!.

Please also view the Steam launch trailer, which contains snippets of my work in action, especially during the main gameplay.



Illustrated Assets & Icons  ▲



UI icons and assets I created to match the established Guns Up style. 


Icons

updated button style, spawn icons for new units and icons for new perks




Player level prestige borders, every 25 levels, the player's level border changed




Card Packs

I created these new designs to match existing card pack artwork. The first was specifically for Halloween, the second an elite premium pack, and the third specifically for a new type of perk.




Mystery Boxes

Special boxes players were able to purchase that had chance to contain a bundle of specific items.



Cards

Various card artwork I illustrated



Announcement Images

These were visible to the player on the landing page, usually advertising a sale, new feature, or patch notes



Loading Screen Posters

These were added to upsell individual features of the game, I conceptualized them as wartime propaganda posters, I had the additional challenge of making sure they all worked in the localizations Guns Up! supported.





Splash Images

Players saw this screen when they first launched the game, we switched between a few based on the current event or promotion. These were the three I fully made myself under direction of our art director.




UI Screens  ▲



A selection of screens that I contributed heavily on, whether it was redesigning the functionality, sprucing up the art, or designing totally from scratch, I worked closely with design and the creative director to make sure these would math the current style as Guns Up! was a live service game     




















Redesigned Screens

New screen on the left, old screen on the right

Opponent Selection - this was a complete conceptual improvement over the old list, part of our push post PS4 launch to create a more immersive experience



Player Inventory


Landing Page


Store





Versus Improvement  ▲



After the launch of Guns Up we wanted to adjust the overall user experience to be a bit more immersive, part of this was concepting a look for the new versus screen. We thought it would be more interesting to show something hinting at the larger world of Guns Up, the horizon if you will.
I created a concept illustration of the 'day' time (Guns Up! swaps between 4 different lighting scenarios), literally showing the larger world beyond our game map. Based on my illustration we thought it would be cool to show the 'player vs player' information here and then pan the camera down to the game field. I broke out the day assets into different levels to be used on 3d cards in the game world, and we used these same assets for the different lighting scenarios, just tinting them as needed. We also did a spooky version for the Halloween event.
The night image below shows what it looks like with the information on top.


Day


Night


Dawn


Dusk


Spooky





Stat Breakdown  ▲



Around the anniversary of Guns Up! We wanted to show some of the more impressive stats our players had gotten up to, after a lot of deliberation of what was exciting to show, I crated this image, that was shared withing our user communities, this one was a lot of fun to work on!