Organic Social
role: art director, animator, 3D designer
NBA 2K Mobile has a social media following of well over half a million across both Twitter and Instagram. We use these channels to inform our players about limited events, card releases and as an opportunity to reflect on what's happening in the current NBA season via humorous videos and various tie-ins.
Videos are created using a combination of After Effects and Blender. Gameplay capture is sometimes required as are high-quality card assets, both which are obtained via proprietary tools.
process
Let's take a closer look at one of the examples above. For this post I wanted to mimic an old-school screen-printed concert poster, with some "trippy" animated characters and elements. The characters are stock that has been customized and puppeteered in After Effects, and the top players each have a unique font and animation, as if they were headlining bands.
Gameplay Capture
role: capture artist, editor
NBA 2K Mobile delivers a bite-sized version of its console counterpart, requiring frequent high-quality gameplay capture for marketing across social, paid media, and broadcast. Camera tools are very limited, with moves like dollies and zooms handled totally manually via controller. This also requires strong gameplay fundamentals and an understanding of engine limitations.
Event/Feature Explainers
role: capture artist, editor, animator
This is a category of videos that we occasionally used to help educate players on the functionality of new events and changes to core gameplay. These videos had an incredibly quick turnaround time that would often require working with an incomplete or heavily WIP game build and cross referencing that with dev documentation.