Assembling awe and wonder
We were approached by XBOX asking to create a key art for the wonderful Game Pass Ultimate: a subscription based access to a wide library of video games, available for PC and consoles.
The brief, was to combine characters from their different exclusive IPs, such as Halo, Forza, Gears, Sea of Thieves and Minecraft, in a well crafted, cohesive image that inspired people to explore their ever growing library.
The challenge, was to find the correct character lock-up, try different backgrounds and finally, combine all the different art directions the each character had, into an image meant to be used in a wide variety of digital formats, and seen by die hard fans of the video games. No biggie.
Original sketch provided by the agency. Our starting point.
We started our process creating several black and white proposals, to focus on position and scale of the characters. Down the road, we learned that some of them can't be placed right next to each other (and that some are quite shorter than you may think).
We finally landed on this lock-up
With our lockup approved, we set out to make a bunch of background variations, looking fot the one that inspired awe and wonder, a sense of discovery and adventure.
A bifrost citadel
A cyberpunky rooftop
An adventurish shore
An alien planet outpost
A sunset city rooftop
A moody borealis night
With the borealis background as the chosen one, we started cleaning up the characters (the McLaren was specially challenging) and matching their lights, shadows, colors and integrating them to their surroundings. A fun process! See the before and after in the slider below.
PROJECT TITLE
XBOX Game Pass Ultimate — Borealis
CLIENTXBOX via GNet Agency
ROLES
DAVE COX — Creative Director & Client Management
MARCE MOYA OCHOA (Doctor PSD) —Lead Project Designer, Art Direction, Concept Sketches, Compositing, Retouching
MARCE MOYA OCHOA (Doctor PSD) —Lead Project Designer, Art Direction, Concept Sketches, Compositing, Retouching