The Incentive Program

A breakdown of my process

Introduction

My preferred process is always design > wireframes > art mock ups > implementations.


I will showcase some of the steps in this page, focusing on my involvement.

Finding Reference

The reference I relied on the most were Dispatch and Balatro.


I like to keep my moodboards to the point, I find that having too much to draw from distracts me and often sends me off on the wrong path.

UI Style Iteration and Mock Ups

As the main UI artist on the team this step is the one I find most rewarding and the one I spend the most time on.

I start from reference, in this case various comparable video game titles, and try to imagine how I can inject personality and world building in buttons and menus.
For this game I was really keen on maintaining the retro futuristic vibe and playing of off the 70s-80s tech. A big part of my visual inspiration was the Atari.

Three of the best options, showcasing the most important areas of the game to give a clear sense of the final style.

The Final Style

When the UI style has been decided, I will generally expand it to include more instances of the UI and make sure the different areas are consistent.

Picking fonts, colours, textures all contribute to the final feel of the game.

Font choice

Picking a hero font for the bulk of the UI was a really important step. Though I’ve used other fonts in different contexts, Nippo is the one that drives the experience the most.

Colour palette

A few guiding colours to help style the entire game

In this game we also utilised Shader Graphs to add a light CRT effect to the non diegetic UI and give it a more retro style.

At this stage I would start collaborating with the code department to implement the various features.

The process is not linear, and a lot of elements come in at different times. My main focus is always to maintain consistency in the visuals, user experience and in the animations.
I’ll take care of setting up preliminary prefabs in unity for code to work with, and come back later to bring it to a polished state.