The Overview
Joyride wanted to build an IP called "Superchamps" - a world filled with super hero athletes. I oversaw all the touch points in the franchise. The 3D models (Champs) were first offered as digital assets (NFTs), sold out in 30 seconds in mid 2022. Two games were being built to showcase the world. To further expand our reach, we started a Tiktok Channel for Kigu and grew it from 0 to 300k followers in less than one year. Through trials and errors, we succeeded at producing this high-quality video on a weekly basis.
If you have a minute, I invite you to watch my overview video below.
Here're the three pipelines I created and maintained for Superchamps.
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Digital assets pipeline: Generating thousands of models and combinations using a universal rig system.
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Game pipeline (Unity): New features and live-ops for seasonal 3D contents including low-poly characters, skins, gears and weapons, as well as VFXs and UI.
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Cinematic pipeline: Social media and user acquisition videos using hi-poly models and redshift renderer in Maya.
SuperChamps Art Team Overview
Art Director: Charles Suwannaporn
Character Design: Nico Aboud
3D Production: Victor Hugo, Jacob English, and Outsourcing Partners
Game Animation: Jacob English
Storyboard & Cinematic Animation: Johnny Turco
Cinematic Lighting: Victor Hugo
Unity Tech Art & VFX: Ben Darling
UX & UI Design: Ula Wizgierska
Graphic Design: Mariia Podiiesna
Software
Adobe CS, Maya, Substance 3D, Figma, Unity, Redshift Renderer
SuperChamps Trailer
The team chose tennis to represent SuperChamps Franchise and worked with external partner on this trailer. I supervised the external team to "uprez" game models for cinematic usage, facilitate storyboarding and animation, and later set up an in-house cinematic pipeline to continue to use these hi-res models for future social media videos that you will see later on, such as the Tiktok project.
Tiktok and Storytelling
We explored short-form videos as a way to expand the SuperChamps Franchise. Kigu, with his frying pan racket, aka EIYF 3000 (Egg-In-Your-Face), has grappled our 300k audience through his journey of how he deals with his mysterious roommate to how he cooks MeowWaffle just because his audience wants it in the comment.
The journey to the video quality we see today involves forays into other methods like motion capture, AI animation, before landing at limited style animation similar to the Lego Movie. With a very slim team of 3, we are able to accomplish one video a week and we love it!
Games & More
Joyride acquired Bullet League - a 2D Battle Royale. With the mission of revitalizing the existing community and bringing our SuperChamps characters into the game, we worked on integrating new 3D characters, 3D environments, new shaders and VFX. Based on the community's vote, the team kept three original 2D characters to turn into 3D. We did the reskin and relaunched the game in under 3 months.
The game is currently live. I'm overseeing the team to produce monthly seasonal content including new character and weapon skins, crate and kill trophy, as well as emoji.