I created several ads for "Game of War" with elaborate battle scenes. I would work somewhat independently on these kinds of projects; First, I would receive a short brief from the creative team and it would be my job to elaborate on the story and board out all of the action. I would then prep character animation files from our game-assets library to work with Element 3D. I used Element 3D as a primitive kind of crowd simulation software to animate large groups of 3D soldiers. I would also create all of the custom VFX throughout. For the destruction effects, I would animate 2D artwork combined with various video elements, particular, and sometimes 3D elements. I would plan a few key moments that required custom 3D character animation, such as the monster charging forward, and would collaborate with a 3D animator for those.

​​​​​​​

"Game of War: Risen Empire" is a mobile ad I directed and composited at MZ. It became one of the top performing Game of War ads, which is meaningful for a game that has grossed nearly 3 billion dollars. This video ad was so successful that it was actually copied by one of our competitors (click the button below). This animation did not use Element 3D, so everything was composited as a 2D layer inside After Effects. I sourced animated sprites from our game-assets library to stage the battle scene and animated the VFX throughout. 

The MZ art department organized a marketing "hackathon" where the artists broke into small groups to conceptualize and create their own spots. For our commercial, I spliced together some old voice-over and music to animate to. I created a rough animatic and built out the scenes, mostly using photographic and video elements. I handled the compositing and VFX for the first four scenes. I collaborated with another AE artist (who composited the final scene) as well as a 3D animator (dragon animation). We had 2-3 days to complete this project and the marketing team decided to deploy our ad in several markets.

Both the "customize-hero" and "real-time-strategy" ads performed well for "Game of War". In this spot, I was tasked to make a combination of the two concepts. Part of what is fun about digital advertising is being able to receive near-instant feedback on the performance and efficacy of our ads across a broad set of data points. This allowed us to test different ideas and incorporate what we learned into future projects. This also wound up being a top-performing ad. For this animation, I boarded out the sequence of events, handled the compositing, motion design, and VFX. I collaborated with another artist who animated the main 3D character.