Netspeak Games
Making an inclusive online world for everybody in today’s day and age is no small feat. The debut game from Netspeak Games, Sunshine Days, embodies this mantra and strives to make a digital difference. My focus has been on advertising and showcasing this safe space through carefully crafted UA campaigns and consistent visual communications.
Season Pass Monthly Creative
With an ever growing online world in a SaaS realm audiences grow hungry for new content all too quick. Sunshine Days’ approach to keeping players engaged was through carefully crafted season passes - packed to the brim with exclusive decorative items. To compliment these monthly drives additional events were held to further excite players such as themed levels and quests… all of which needing their very own communications and advertisements.
Key art was absolutely crucial to help showcase what was in store on a monthly basis. I took a lead role within this task by setting up initial scenes and compositions within Unreal Engine. From here I moved everything into Maya, added some extra little touches before rendering. Further additions were made in Photoshop; grading and tweaking the scene through added blurs and effects - all before the incredibly talented Dana Reyes took this layered composition in for a paintover.
This key art was then adapted by myself to fit multiple sizes and use-cases, with the most important being event cards within the App Store and Google Play Store. It was crucial that the focal point of these compositions was central to ensure each visual worked across a wide range of sizes.
And last but not least, these monthly releases were complimented by an all new app icon. Although these stuck to a consistent approach with the same character, there was enough of a change to spark interest or remind older players to re-open the app.
Spine Character Animations
Away from the advertising side of my role, I’d seek out opportunities to help within the game itself. During discussions around more dynamic character dialogue, I offered to prototype some idle animations which would compliment the on-screen text. Taking existing key art I sliced up the individual layers and built a rig within Spine. The intention behind this was to not only showcase what could be done, but also to create it in a format that was useable in-game if needed.
Going viral on TikTok…
Alongside other weekly duties the UA team set aside an hour a week to quickly power through some quickfire social content for TikTok. Memes, trending topics, anything goes was generally the rule of thumb - with my very own take on Crab Rave taking the viral spot as the most viewed video on the channel peaking at 500k views, and growing.
BAU UA Advertising
The core aspect of my role was to build upon existing creative themes, consult user research and UA experts, all with the aim of building better visuals that got results. The animations created consisted of sourcing capture from Unreal Engine, utilising motion toolkits I created, and ensuring anything worked at three different sizes: landscape, square, and portrait.
An incredibly challenging but rewarding task that often yielded unusual results around what scored best on CTR and D30 player retention.
Instagram & Discord Stickers
Outside of internal communications another angle I pushed through the creative pipeline was the creation of assets that could be used within user generated content. The aim here was simple, to provide the users who shouted the most online with branded assets that tie back into the game. The challenge here however was the restrictive guidelines around filesizes and dimensions that varied from platform to platform.
App Store Optimisation & Design
Staying still in the mobile gaming world is never an option. Consistently trying new visuals and A/B testing concepts and theories is an absolute must, with the app stores being no exception to this rule. Through on-going user research and reporting we ran multiple screenshot sets with the aim of constantly improving the game’s metrics.
Creator Mode Branding & Steam Assets
With mobile operations well and truly flying, Netspeak Games turned towards Steam with the aim of providing interior designers a much more hands on room builder via desktop devices. Not only was I called upon to create a variant of the game’s existing logo, but to bring it to life via animation along with the steam page itself.
Unreal Engine for Marketing
Having been taken under the wing of the incredibly talented capture artist Will Heynen, I’ve been crafting scenes and sequences for TikTok reels and UA advertisements making the most of the in-game engine and library of assets.