Su Ke: I’m gonna change the zombies
in the foreground to graves. In the background, there might be more zombies. Gekko could survive a zombie apocalypse. Wingman won’t be bitten by zombies. Brandon: I feel like Phoenix is dying first in a zombie apocalypse Su Ke: Because of his personality
Brandon: Yeah his cocky attitude you know and he just runs in. Phoenix: They’re coming straight in. Trust me! Su Ke: And then whoever tries to cover him dies second. 🎵 Horror Music 🎵 🎵 I’ll Show You (Instrumental) - K/DA🎵 Hi! My name is Su Ke. I’m a senior
principal illustrator on VALORANT. My role in Chinese would be 高级首席插画师 I work on both marketing and the character dev team. We work on the illustration art style for the game. My name’s Brandon Meier. I am a principal visual designer. I’ve been at Riot for about seven and a half years. Been on VALORANT since we launched the game. We’re here today. We’re going to be creating
episodic, stylized key art for VALORANT. We don’t know what it is yet. There’s a few options in there. But the idea is something kind of
crazy in this Halloween-inspired key art. With that VALORANT edge to it. Su Ke: Yeah gonna be a fake movie poster. Brandon: Fake movie poster for some
type of horror genre. Excited to get into it. Su Ke: Not sure how serious or light-hearted it is yet, but yeah let’s see. Brandon: And on that note, let’s get into that trusty Teemo hat. We have our options in here. Su Ke: Excited! Su Ke: Alright!
Brandon: Let’s see it, Su Ke Su Ke: Z-Zombie... apocalypse survivors. Brandon: Alright!
Su Ke: Zombie apocalypse survivors. Brandon: That should be a fun one.
Su Ke: Yeah! Yeah. Su Ke: Zombie theme. I was actually working on the
Zombie Slayers when I was on League team. Brandon: Ahh okay okay.
Su Ke: So I’m kind of familiar with that. Brandon: Hopefully today you guys get a
little glimpse into the creative process. This process could sometimes last months, it could
sometimes last weeks. We’re doing it in one day. Brandon: It’s going to be sketchy. It’s not going to be as
polished as you normally see when you log into the game. Brandon: This is no indication that we're ever
going to do a zombie-themed VALORANT anything. This is just a Halloween treat. There’s no brief, we’re making up the brief right now.
Su Ke: Yeah yeah Brandon: A lot of times when we start this
key art process we have creative directors helping us, Brandon: brand managers,
Su Ke: Producers. Brandon: Yeah. It’s really all based on what
the product is doing so whether it’s a new map, a new agent,
Su Ke: or gun skins Brandon: new gun skins
Su Ke: Yeah Brandon: There’s a lot of parameters that we have
to kind of work in when we’re creating key art Today, we don’t have any of those. Su Ke: We don’t have any limitations. But we also
have to figure out a lot of things by ourselves. Brandon: We are our own brand managers today.
Su Ke: Right. Brandon: And so VALORANT has a naming convention for our episodes. I think we started with Ignition.
Su Ke: Yeah, Ignition. Brandon: And then they’ve kind of slightly changed,
but the last part of the word always ends on the “-tion” Evolution, there’s Revelation. With the zombie apocalypse,
we could do something like . . . Resurrection? Su Ke: Yeah!
Brandon: Sounds like it makes sense. Su Ke: By the way, what does it mean? Brandon: Oh like revive. It means like you’re
bringing somebody alive from the dead. Su Ke: Oh okay. I don’t mind that this part
got recorded since I’m not a native speaker. Brandon: So yeah if you’re resurrected then
you’re resurrected from the dead, right? Su Ke: Yeah yeah, okay, okay. That sounds . . . magical. Like . . . Like . . . Frankenstein? Brandon: Kinda yeah yeah yeah
Su Ke: Okay, okay. Oh, that’s cool. Brandon: Kinda yeah resurrected, resurrection sounds pretty cool. Su Ke: Sounds very Halloween. Brandon: Very Halloween inspired. I’m thinking a lot of red. I mean VALORANT has
a red color I feel like that’s pretty iconic. Brandon: Is there a story we should try and capture in this? Did Sage go to revive someone on a
full moon and something went wrong? Su Ke: I might start from the keywords,
look up some reference from the internet. And yeah let’s see what I get, you know? Brandon: I think I’m probably just gonna start mood boarding. Start grabbing inspiration from Pinterest, Behance, ArtStation just start pulling together some
cool stylized zombie apocalypse stuff. Su Ke: Nice, nice, nice
Brandon: Just see if there’s anything in there. Su Ke: I’ll start from some compositions. Compositional sketches. It’ll probably be generic, but it looks
more like a poster and we can start from there. Brandon: Yeah! I think that works. Su Ke: Actually, I would definitely start from searching the key words on the internet. First one would be . . . Apocalypse. Searching keywords to get some key visual element like apocalypse probably some abandoned city. Su Ke: Yeah Brandon: I feel like Fracture would be a good one. It has a lot of overgrown buildings. But it’s all kind of crumbly and looks like
it could fit into the post-apocalyptic world Su Ke: The first stage will be exploration.
Just visualizing a couple of key words I had in mind. For example, what does a zombie look like?
What does the apocalypse look like? The most efficient tool will be searching from the internet. So apocalypse, I see there’s a lot of dust colors/color key and survivors, what I get is the information like their expression. It looks definitely like they’ve experienced a lot
of hard times, so their expressions are more serious. For the key word zombie there’s a lot of grey and
green colors. We can consider that color as well. Brandon: Yeah. Maybe the orange comes
in from the design elements. Complimentary. Su Ke: Yeah. Poison, corrupted colors.
Definitely some survivors in the foreground. By the way, are you thinking about
maybe it’s like a B-Movie style? Brandon: Oh okay.
Su Ke: Kind of cheap. Brandon: A little cheesy?
Su Ke: Cheesy! Brandon: Add some cheese to it?
That’d be funny. I like that. Su Ke: Cheesy Element.
Brandon: Lemme look up some retro horror movie posters. Su Ke: Right.
Brandon: Old School. Brandon: I think retro is a good word for it.
Retro horror poster. Let’s see what’s out there. Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein, The Shining,
Pet Cemetery, Evil Dead . . . There’s some good ones in here. Ohh how’d I forget about Scream? I’m a big fan of Alien. That’s probably one of my favorite movies of all time. Is it horror though? Is it more like action/suspense? Actual horror though, oh my gosh. I feel like The Ring is a classic. Favorite zombie movie would probably have to be 28 Days Later. Su Ke: Oh yeah, I love that one.
Brandon: Where they’re like fast. Su Ke: Yeah yeah!
Brandon: I think it takes place in London. Su Ke: There are one and two right? Brandon: Yeah there’s 28 Weeks Later is the sequel
Su Ke: Oh yeah yeah yeah Brandon: Do you know they’re doing another one? 28 Years Later. Su Ke: Right Now?
Brandon: Yeah it’s gonna come out in the next few years. Su Ke: Okay, okay, it’s definitely exciting. I think the first one was really impactful. Brandon: Yeah. They changed the zombie formula.
Su Ke: 28 Days Later, yeah. Brandon: Oh, they can be fast?
Su Ke: They’re really fast. Brandon: Army of Darkness. That’s a classic.
Just looking at all the inspiration I pulled. I am seeing a lot of orange colors. I mean
obviously Halloween is orange and grey and stuff. Su Ke: I would call this stage thumbnailing. Just brainstorming the ideas right after the exploration. I think that the first one is kind of classic
survivor in apocalypse environment. The second one, I was trying to push a horror movie scene. There are a couple of big heads and let’s say they are protagonists. They are kind of frightened. And in the background, I’m not sure yet,
but I guess it’s a big zombie silhouette. It could be zombilized KAY/O or whatever, right? This big monster. The third one I’m thinking about I will still use survivor element, but they’re fighting zombies directly. I think we’re gonna start from these three. Draw a group of people here.
Group as a team is a different silhouette. And of course with weapon. Brandon: Now I’m currently just trying to find some cool fonts, gather this inspiration for some logo type treatments and then Su Ke eventually will share some sketches with people and everyone’s just gonna like . . .
you know. If it’s a typical meeting, everyone’s like, “good luck, Su Ke! Choose the best one.” Because a lot of the time they’re so good it’s almost hard to choose. You’ve almost got to go back to the strategy of
what you’re trying to do and see what works best. In the case of we’re trying to showcase a new map, that map
has got to be almost like the hero of the composition. Su Ke: Well it’s usually a similar
thing is going to happen twice. The first time is people choose sketches
from the silhouette from the thumbnail. The second time is when the key art is done,
people choose the treatment from Brandon The visual design. Also a pretty hard but fun process. Brandon: Oh yeah it’s always fun.
I do like to at least explore 2 or 3 options. Solid, distinct directions. From there
you can go down that variation route. Su Ke: We give people some preference.
“Personally, we think this one is gonna work better.” Whatever they choose or not, we
give them the preference. Yo, by the way. This is the first time I am
directly face-to-face working with Brandon We were working through the internet the past few years. Brandon: Yeah. The whole pandemic really. Su Ke: Kind of exciting. Brandon: I think I started about two and a half, three weeks
before the pandemic started, on VALORANT. So I was in the office, I think Su Ke was in the office. Su Ke: We just met once. Brandon: Yeah we only met once right before the pandemic started.
Su Ke: This is actually the second or third time, yeah. Brandon: But I mean we’ve collaborated closely this whole time.
Su Ke: Exactly. Brandon: It’s kind of fun to be in person working together. Su Ke: Usually if we release a new agent it’s a big teamwork. A lot of awesome people are behind
that. There’s agent concept artists. For maps, there’s environment artists. There’s a big group. And the narrative team figuring
out the world building behind the story. A big teamwork that goes to concept route. After that, the character team is going to work on modeling and animators work on the animation. The whole big
team called the character team are the heroes behind the agents. And we as the marketing team figure out what
it looks like and are helpful on the branding. By the way, if you have more interest about the other disciplines, you can check out the first four episodes. Link is in the description. Brandon: Our dev friends and partners, once they have
a firm grasp on what the new agent is going to look like, We come in there and we basically put that final
wrapper on whatever that new thing is for VALORANT Every time a player logs into the game, the first
thing they see is the art that Su Ke and I worked on. Stuff’s gotta look good. And it’s gotta
hype you up to get into the game. Su Ke: Right
Brandon: You’re loading into the game and you’re looking at this beautiful key art. Su Ke: Ready to Fight.
Brandon: Yeah. Su Ke: Brandon, I’m gonna show you some of these
ideas and then we are going to take a look together. Brandon: Nice. Su Ke: Let me show you some of the ideas Brandon: Ooh is that Viper?
Su Ke: Yeah that’s Viper in the background! Su Ke: And the lower part is a lot of zombies.
Brandon: Ooh okay. And they’re all kind of going for her. Su Ke: And the foreground is going to be the protagonists.
They are running away from the disaster. Brandon: Yeah.
Su Ke: Running away from zombies. And of course, they look way more frightened This is kind of a more comedy scene, because
I’m imagining whoever is running away from that, Like, for example, Brimstone, he’s supposed to be a tough guy right? Su Ke: He’s running away.
Brandon: Yeah. He’s running away with fear in his eyes. Brandon: Is Viper’s pose, is that her back and she’s kind of turned? Su Ke: Yeah she’s got her back facing
the camera. We only see the side view. Brandon: Gotcha, gotcha. That adds a little to it. Su Ke: The brush stroke is not as accurate
as before, but yeah this is basically the idea. Su Ke: Viper looks giant.
Brandon: And is that some of her smoke coming out? Brandon: From one of her like . . .
Su Ke: Right, the whole scene is gonna be really green. Su Ke: and it looks really green.
Brandon: Okay Su Ke: And the second one, I’m gonna try the one that you
just mentioned as well about the reviving goes wrong. Su Ke: This is the second one.
Brandon: The last revive. Su Ke: This one is a lot about the protagonists. There’s a lot of big heads. Brandon: Oh yeah. Movie posters? Big heads. We need giant heads. Brandon: People need to know who’s in the movie!
Su Ke: Yeah yeah yeah Su Ke: They might be pretty nervous as well.
Yeah this one goes a little more serious. And in the background, I’m not sure yet. But for now, it’s, Su Ke: Let’s say KAY/O?
Brandon: Oh yeah. Yeah. Su Ke: But I guess he’s supposed
to be a robot, right? But he gets zombied. What is it called? Zombilized? Brandon: Uh, yeah. Zombified? Su Ke: Zombified. Zombified. Brandon: That’s dope yeah.
Su Ke: A lot of different people. And this is the last one. Su Ke: The last one is kind of classic. Su Ke: The sole survivors
Brandon: Silhouetted, yup. Su Ke: Fighting a lot of zombies. Brandon: This would make for a good poster too. I think you could if you wanted to even put a big Viper or Sage in the background. Similar to that first concept. This feels like it would, given our time frame, be the one. Su Ke: Right now the idea is more like in
the background is a mushroom cloud. Brandon: Oh okay.
Su Ke: I’m not sure yet, but for now it’s like a mushroom cloud. Brandon: You could probably even add some
little tiny zombies in the background coming towards them. Or even surrounding them all like they’re
all back-to-back fighting for survival. Su Ke: Yeah. Add a little more, just a bit busier. Brandon: Yeah I dig it.
Su Ke: I’m gonna . . . Should we try one more Su Ke: thing about the Sage one? Brandon: Oh yeah, I was gonna say maybe this is the one with Sage because she does that move when she rezzes someone she goes like . . . *whoosh* she brings her arm up. I’ll show you, there’s a power player fantasy card for Sage. Su Ke: Okay. Oh yeah yeah.
Brandon: But she’s basically doing her thing where she rezzes someone, cuz that’s her ultimate ability. Su Ke: I think I saw that one as well. There’s a big effect, right? Brandon: Yeah. That could be dope. Su Ke: Could you share your idea again about Sage reviving? Brandon: Okay yeah yeah. So I’m calling it Sage’s Last Revive. She went to revive someone on a full moon, something happened, and they
came back a little different, ya know? Maybe how she rezzed someone didn’t work out,
something went wrong. Maybe Reyna cast a spell on her. Who knows, right? We’re just making this up as we go. But, resurrected maybe someone
on her team and they became a zombie. Or, something happened and she started the
zombie apocalypse and she’s the only one that can stop it. Su Ke: I got two rough ideas based on this.
Brandon: Okay. Su Ke: The first one is Sage is a little bit surprised and nervous about that because she feels like she’s messed up. Su Ke: Kind of a comedy element to it.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah. Su Ke: Another one is epic. She just summons a lot - she looks evil here. Brandon: Oooh that could be good. Maybe she’s the one that summons the army. Maybe Sage . . . Su Ke: Yeah
Brandon: . . . Turned evil at some point in her life. Su Ke: Kind of. Let’s try it out and if not then we have more options. Su Ke: Based on that let’s see which one has more options.
Brandon: Okay, yeah. I like where this is going. I think maybe . . . Su Ke: This is the first idea. We all know
the first idea always goes better. Brandon: Yeah it’s true it’s true, that’s
why we’ve got to get it out first. Brandon: Yeah. Dude, these are cool Su Ke! Su Ke: Thanks, man.
Brandon: I don’t know how you do this every time. Brandon: I’m kind of messing with some “resurrection” logo types
Su Ke: Nice. Brandon: and typework. Going real
cheesy with choosing fonts. Su Ke: Let’s go cheesy first.
Brandon: Okay yeah we’ll go cheesy Brandon: and then we’ll see if we can take
the cheese and add it to the VALORANT edge. Brandon: On VALORANT we have a lot of brand fonts that we use. And so whenever I start to work on a logo
type for a new episode or a new act, kind of want to stay within those brand fonts and then figure out a way to maybe modify them to feel unique to the episode. And so, there’s a lot of custom line art kind
of goes into branding a new episode and act. It needs to feel as close as possible to the
brand but still feel unique and special and new. I can kind of show some here on this screen real quick. I worked at an internship when I was going through college. I went to school for graphic design at a California state college. My first design gig was at the Sacramento
Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. Their whole goal is to get tourism to come to Sacramento. I think the very first thing I ever did was a poster for the convention center. And it looked so . . . I remember I saw a photo of it
recently and I was like, “oh my god, what was I thinking?” But it was about recycling. It was just a sign that
was supposed to encourage people to recycle. I would have done it completely different today,
but I think when I did finish it I was pretty proud of it. I also had some hard labor jobs. My dad was a miner. And so when I was in college, I would come home and he was able
to get me a job in this mining facility on the side of a mountain where I would stand at a machine, I’d put a
bag on a machine, it fills up to like 60 pounds of Su Ke: Wow.
Brandon: this white rock powder, and then you throw it on the pallet Brandon: You fill up that pallet with 20-something
bags, you push it down a belt, and you did that all day. If you are an aspiring designer, do passion projects. Personally, I went to school, I got my degree, I did all my work. And I was always a gamer, but I had no idea how to get into the industry. And so I started making fan art for video games just for fun, for myself. I did some art for The Last of Us that I wanted to put on my walls for a game that I really enjoyed. And as it turned out, other people liked it too. And it was eventually licensed and,
you know, sold on official merch and, and then from there I shared it online. It
eventually gained momentum and people saw it and people in the industry
started to take notice. that's kind of how I got into the game industry. I don't think I would have been here If I didn't have that passion for games and kind of seek it out. So a recruiter at Riot reached out to me And they’re like, “hey, we notice you're a fan of video games,
but you don't work in the video game industry.” And I was like, “yes, I'm listening.” I was working in action sports. I was senior brand designer at GoPro.
A lot of different billboards. I did their style guide brand identity kit. it was still good work, and it was where I've always wanted to be. I was like, that was awesome. I did it, you know? But like, at the end of the day, I'm still going home playing games with my friends every day. And once I realized I could work in the gaming industry, I was like, this is where I actually want to be. Like, it's weird to say, but this is like a dream, it's kind of crazy. my biggest advice to people who are wanting to get into the game industry is do work that you're passionate about, and I think eventually you're going to be where you
want to be just based on those passions. Su Ke: first job I got paid. But the first one I really enjoy was definitely from Riot. It was a long time ago, back in 2010 I would say. I was a big fan of DOTA so I did some fan art right? Riot reached out to me. Brandon: Wait, you got your start with fan art too? Su Ke: Yeah, yeah.
Brandon: Okay okay Su Ke: it was a log in screen. If you go back to the first DOTA, the free one DOTA 1, I would say. My dream was like my art can be seen by a lot of players worldwide Brandon: Oh and they see it. They see it now. Brandon: Between League and VALORANT.
Su Ke: Yeah and one little funny thing, because of my English, you know, I introduced myself as I’m a designer,
but think I wrote it wrong. You know, I signed myself as a landscape designer, but I said I’m a landscapper so . . . So people said, “oh, just such a great story.
Think about that. A landscaper right now working with us.” So anyway, that was that was a good memory. Brandon: So you were recruited then? Su Ke: What does that mean? Recruited? Brandon: Riot reached out to you.
Su Ke: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brandon: Same thing, someone from Riot emailed me once and I was like, “Riot Games? Wait . . . Riot Games!?” Su Ke: Well, I thought at the time I got an
email, “I’ll do research on this game.” So after I played this game, I felt, “wait it’s actually really fun.” You know, I want to I want to
put more effort on that one. Yeah, that's how I started. speaking of that, a lot of people ask
me, “how’d you get hired at Riot? do you have any suggestions
about how prepare portfolios?” and etc. And I say, “I’ve never really prepared a portfolio. I have no idea about that.” But speaking of that, I do have some suggestions. You know, if you want to have a good
portfolio, it's good to be more specific. I have a feeling that if the work is more
specific, you know, what you want to do. That's most important.
Yeah, I moved here in 2013. in September. I still remember the date. Actually, while I had just joined Riot, I was mainly
working on the Teamfight key arts for League. Brandon: Those are the big ones with Baron and they’re all kind of-
Su Ke: Yeah yeah the Baron one. Brandon: Yup. I remember those. Su Ke: The first one was the season 1 key art. I even don't have the original art. I only have the really low res-version. Brandon: I'm just kind of looking at different ways to execute a zombie apocalypse
logo type within the VALORANT IP. keeping that bold VALORANT logo lock up style, but maybe putting some grit on it,
looking at how we could kind of make it feel just a little more Halloween
and just playing with type. This changes drastically once, you know,
Su Ke will toss me over some thumbnails or even some versions of the key
art. Once I get that in, you know, that might impact everything,
or it might just propel a version forward and those pieces just connect perfectly. When we were working on Revelation, that whole episode was really interesting because Su Ke’s final
illustration had a lot of circular design elements which at the time kind of helped showcase
the story that was happening in VALORANT which was our agents were unlocking
this new map called Lotus. In that cinematic, Harbor puts his hand into this lock and these circular design elements kind of start popping up and opening up essentially the map to players. Then Su Ke's illustration, he did a lot of circular line work. And so once that kind of came to me,
I was like, okay, we've got we've got a really strong circular motif going that we could kind of play off of this idea
of unlocking a new map. And so that pretty much informed a lot
of the shape languages that we designed for that entire episode. I could sometimes work tandemly with Su Ke,
but sometimes he will come out of the blue with something amazing
that just sparked so many other ideas. And sometimes it's the reverse.
I think in episode three with KAY/O, we, you know, I was like, “What if we try
something with our attacker defender colors with like red on one side
and green on the other?” And Su Ke was like,
“Yeah, that's dope, let's do it!” And so he basically changed up the color
palette of the design based on like an idea I had, which is pretty rad. you know, just kind of going back
to how we kind of collaborate. So yeah, depending on the process,
where we're at in it, either of us could kind of impact each other in a way that kind of sparks a
new idea into a new direction. When Su Ke and I, we work together very closely, Outside of work, I ran into him once at the . . . What was it? Like, a flea market? What's the big one? Su Ke: Rose Bowl
Brandon: The Rose Bowl, yeah! I randomly saw Su Ke at the Rose Bowl once and I went and tapped him on the shoulder
and he was like, “What the heck?!” Su Ke: It was funny. Brandon: I met your kids and your wife. It was so random. But like that was, I think the first time
I really saw you like outside of work. Su Ke: Outside of work, yeah.
Brandon: Kind of a funny situation. Brandon: We do have team game nights. I think early on, when VALORANT
first started, we were really into them. We would get down on some team game nights.
Su Ke: We actually do huddle a lot. Brandon: Yeah. We will.
Su Ke: A lot of random questions Su Ke: about design, about the illustration itself. Su Ke: And you know, it's just some art discussion.
Brandon: Yeah. Su Ke: It’s pretty fun because we don't have
to be face to face to solve this type of problem. Brandon: Like we don't ever feel like we need to schedule meetings
Su Ke: Right. Brandon: It's just always like, “Hey, let's
huddle. Let’s talk about this real quick.” Brandon: And, like, hash it out in a-
Su Ke: What's up, dude? Huddle? Su Ke: Yeah, that's good. I enjoy this type of work style. Really efficient, honestly. Brandon: especially when you get
two people that are both, you know, into their craft
and they're people that, you know, do their best work,
kind of almost heads down, you still need to come up
and collaborate and work together. Brandon: we’re contributors and as individuals . . .
Su Ke: Something I really like working with Brandon Su Ke: is that sometimes we share thoughts
and feedback and it’s pretty straightforward. We don't need to think about, okay, am I hurting Brandon’s feelings or is Brandon hurting mine. Brandon: Right.
Su Ke: Don’t need to really concern about that too much. Su Ke: We just focus on the craft, you know,
how to make this make this more efficient. Su Ke: I enjoy the work style we have.
Brandon: Absolutely. kind of remove the ego and just focus the on the craft.
Make it as dope as possible. Su Ke: All right, so the three characters. Gekko may be too tall. I will change him to be a little bit shorter. But the first one’s definitely Brimstone. And the back one will be, let’s say Deadlock. Brandon: Still getting Sage in there? Su Ke: Yes, Sage is in the background.
Brandon: Okay. Su Ke: Sage is kind of . . .
Brandon: Alright I’m gonna put Deadlock in there. Su Ke: Basically right now I'm mainly
focusing on characters’ silhouettes. So right now, to me, the most efficient thing
is not really focus on any details. I would really focus
on playing with a silhouette and after that, once I’m happy with the silhouette, I will start adding more lighting,
which is going to be the next step. But I will add some lighting here, roughly. So you’ll see generally side lighting from here. but the face, there's nothing there. Not much detail.
I can always add details later. Right. For example, I'm using shapes
to try to lock down his pose. The good thing is if the pose doesn't work, I didn't spend too long. You know, I still have a lot
more time to change. What if I say right now I'm
not happy about his pose. I need to change to another one. So it's just fast. It gives you more opportunity to play with your ideas. Brandon: I just threw your illustration in here. It's already like feeling good. Su Ke: alright. Su Ke: Holy **** dude!
Brandon: So I’ve got the last revive. And I threw it in there dude. Su Ke: That’s pretty funny
Brandon: It kinda feels pretty good. Brandon: When I originally put in there
it felt like, you know, kind of small. But I think the scale of a poster, this
feels like a good scale, right? Su Ke: Yeah, it looks really good. Here, it’s supposed to be zombies,
but right now it feels like graves. I think looks pretty cool. think I can even make it as graves as well. Brandon: Oh, yeah. You mean like tombstones almost? Su Ke: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Brandon: yeah. Brandon: Oh, that could be red. Yeah.
The greens are cool, too. I like, I mean, maybe they just get like,
desaturated a little bit, but. And then you have, like,
different little pops of green coming in. Brandon: But yeah
Su Ke: Feel free to try any option. Su Ke: I might try making the green more saturated. Brandon: Okay, yeah yeah.
Su Ke: Well I mainly I want to focus on Su Ke: adding more detail to Sage. Right now Sage and the pose, I haven't really polished. Brandon: Okay. Yeah, yeah,
yeah I can see that. Su Ke: Cool! it looks really good.
You just worked on that today? Brandon: Yeah yerah! I was putting together all like the type Brandon: and the fake movie credits.
Su Ke: While I was struggling. Nice nice. Brandon: Yeah I had some other
type options, or logo options. I just don't think they're as cool as that, though. Su Ke: the credits are really
random credits or what not. Brandon: Yeah, they're just like placeholder credits, right?
Su Ke: Okay, okay. Brandon: You could do like
something cool with that one maybe. Brandon: But I don't know.
Su Ke: Well if you want to do that . . . Brandon: I think this one's better.
Su Ke: Yeah, this one is better. Su Ke: But if you want to do
that one, I can make a sunrise. Brandon: Oh yeah naw naw. I mean we, Yeah,
we might be able to add that but I think, I think where you're headed as this starts
to feel like an explosion back there and Sage is doing the,
the rez kind of right? Brandon: Or maybe she-
Su Ke: Sage right now, Sage’s definitely the bad guy. Brandon: Yeah. Brandon: Yeah, it's epic.
Su Ke: Cool. Brandon: It's looking good.
Su Ke: Cool! I’m excited. I’m gonna do some adjustments. Definitely want to polish Sage even more. Brandon: You could get some good rim light going too.
Su Ke: Right, right, right. Su Ke: When the art goes good, the feeling gets better. Brandon: Nice.
Su Ke: True artist. Su Ke: I'm going to change zombies Su Ke: in the foreground to graves.
Brandon: Okay. Su Ke: A graveyard. In the background,
there might be more zombies. Brandon: Yeah, I like that. I might be able to find some zombie
silhouettes to that I could place in there. Su Ke: Yeah yeah, sure. Brandon: as a visual designer,
I've never felt like a real artist. I’m inspired by other people's art, you know? And that's one of the reasons why I kind of
got into graphic design is essentially you’re helping amplify, and you're working with a
lot of other people's art. I always try to tend to stay away from calling myself
an artist and stick with designer. Actually I find it like more interesting because you're actually solving more problems
when you're working with a team of people. Because everyone has different goals
they're trying to accomplish and the challenge is more interesting
because it's more confined, it's more focused, and within that focus,
you have to still be creative. There’s no . . . When you're making art
for yourself, I could only imagine it’s like You’re just doing whatever you want. Maybe you're
trying to convey a feeling of something, but you know, when you're creating art
that is meant to serve a purpose, to inspire players or to evoke some type of gameplay fantasy. that starts to feel like a bigger thing
than working just solely for yourself. Su Ke: Brandon, Brandon. You're too modest. You're a real artist. I can confirm you’re a real artist. Su Ke: Yeah to me art is working with, collaborating
with other artists versus, working by themselves. I mean, either could work.
Either has some fun part. Iit's just like one I mentioned. If you’re working on your own work,
figuring out the things by yourself, there's definitely a lot more freedom. But the thing is, if you’re working with other artists,
you get inspired by other artists and it's a pretty good opportunity
to learn from other artists. Su Ke: which is the part I love the most,
Brandon: Yeah, that's true. Brandon: when I started at Riot, I
would get files or splash art for League, and I'd open up those files, I’d
look at all the layer structures. And I feel like just by being around
other artists at Riot, you just start to level up. Su Ke: They’re inspirational, right?
Brandon: Inspiration’s just palpable. Brandon: You know everyone's doing something
amazing everywhere you look and you can't help but like start to pick that up
and play off of all that energy Su Ke: Exactly. Su Ke: I said this is Gekko. I want him to have some interaction with His little buddy. Brandon: Yeah Wingman kind of
became our little mascot. How would Wingman survive a zombie apocalypse? I think he’d just clap those zombies back. He would just keep *poosh* like shock-waving them out of the way. If he has a spike, and I know he
he knows how to plant a spike, so maybe he just like drops spike on them and then bounces and nukes the town. Oh, that could be the backdrop
of the town instead of a nuke, Brandon: it's the spike explosion.
Su Ke: I think that Wingman . . . Su Ke: well to me, Wingman doesn’t,
it won’t be hurt even though he got bitten You know, it should be totally fine. That's my first reaction. Brandon: Oh, his little creatures can't turn
into zombies so they protect Gekko. Okay. Yeah. That’s . . . I like it, I like that. Not bad. Can KAY/O turn into a zombie? I mean, he's a robot. I mean, maybe he's infected. Maybe he gets infected
with a zombie virus. But, I mean, I think KAY/O
stands a pretty good chance. Su Ke: Right. Brandon: Breach. You know, is fake metal arms, if he gets bit Su Ke: If it bit, it just bit my arm. Brandon: Yeah, that's fine. Just push the zombies off. I’m calling the movie The Last Revive. I'm trying to think of some good, corny,
B-movie taglines for the poster. Su Ke: Oh cool.
Brandon: Like . . . Brandon: It could be something like, “you're
only revived once” you know, or like, “you're only dead once” or, “you're never dead twice.” I don’t know, it’s so stupid Su Ke: I love it. You brought me back a lot of good memories when I was little I watched some B-movies. Love it. Brandon: I kind of grew up on the
90’s X-Men TV show. That was my jam. I always wanted to draw Wolverine,
the X-Men squad, like my favorite. I mean, I still have a printed Jim Lee. I believe it's like the Uncanny X-Men issue one Where it had a bunch of different covers. Jim Lee
was always a big inspiration to me, his comic books, and- Su Ke: Oh that's why you were so
happy that you can collaborate with him. Brandon: Yeah, yeah. So we eventually for the launch of Pearl, there was a comic shop in Pearl
and working with our creative directors, they came up with an idea to make a bunch
of fake VALORANT comic book covers to showcase that the VALORANT agents
in the Omega verse were heroes. There were these . . . They were essentially
the X-Men of that universe. You know, they're kind of known heroes,
like an athlete. They had statues them. So, you know, it goes without
saying they'd have comic books. And so we actually got to work
with Jim Lee to create a fake VALORANT comic book cover. And then I got do all the graphic design
on it, which was probably a dream project. Brandon: I mean, it is, it was.
Su Ke: I didn't know that. Su Ke: Now I know why you were so happy. Brandon: I remember you were saying
you were like, “oh, who? Jim Lee? Jim Lee should be lucky to work with you!” Brandon: And I was like, “Get out of here Su Ke!”
Su Ke: Don’t record this part! Su Ke: Speaking of art influence, I started drawing from my dad. When I was a little, I drew a lot of Transformers already. I had a lot of fun. A lot of good memories was Transformers.
and I still remember one the toy’s cover. that completely impressed me
and I copied the work and a couple days ago,
I saw the artist on Instagram who posted the art.
I recognized it as the one I think it was 30 years ago. And I asked, I left a comment.
I rarely leave a comment on Instagram, but I left the comment,
“were you the original artist?” Brandon: Did he get back to you?
Su Ke: Yeah he said, “yes!” Brandon: Oh sick! Su Ke: Pretty good. That's enough to me. Brandon: So one of the things I like to do
once I Su Ke’s work is I like to mess it up and change the colors and see what I could do. My
process is so much iterative in trying out things,
adjusting color values. I'm not necessarily painting in the sense
that an illustrator would paint, basically taking the art and applying
huge global color adjustments. to find this image in my head. And so, one of the things I really like
to do is get into the selective color adjustments. And you can literally just choose pretty
much some primary values of colors. I like to start with either like the darks
or the lights, and once I've selected basically all the dark values, I can kind of go in there and start
to mess with those colors and just see how composition could change
just by quickly adjusting color values with hue/saturation, selective color adjustments, There's a lot of different ways
to just look at changing the color on an image very fast. Quickly looking
at some of these preexisting gradients
that I've used for other projects like this is a Gekko color palette,
being quickly applied to this. It doesn't look great,
but you can kind of get a sense of how quickly you can look at adjusting
colors, right? this one felt pretty cool. I think we use this color palette
for all the yellow L.A. stuff, like the L.A. map and a few other things. Color is very weird. Especially
with our VALORANT red. It's like a VALORANT magenta really. I've heard people
call it the VALORANT pink. It looks different on every single monitor
and it's really tough to kind of stay consistent with it. Just because every monitor is different.
Every screen is different. the best we could do is try to keep
our screens as calibrated as possible. one little secret tip I like to do is all
our iPhones are pretty well calibrated. you could just send
an image to your phone, look at it on your phone
look at that on your screen, and you can kind of get a sense that,
a lot of people have iPhones. iPhones are very well calibrated. You can hold it up next to my screen and then just see if it, like
feels drastically different, you know, or if I need to, like, adjust some things. there's definitely been times where I was
maybe like in a wrong Photoshop color profile and I export it out,
sent some stuff out and then I, saw, I posted, I'm just like,
Oh my God, what happened? You know, like the colors are so wrong Su Ke: At this stage, I will start to play with some lighting. For example, right now
if I want to push Sage to be a bad guy, then I will probably use some bottom lighting
to emphasize she’s more dangerous, But if I think Sage right now I want to
I want to change her be a more good guy. And might design
her little more heroic lighting which is lighting from the side view
or even from the top. So she looks more like summoning
holy light, things like that. It’s a really very interesting stage
there is a lot of options we can play with. on the foreground characters, we use rim light to add
more clean shapes and clean edges to emphasize style. So adding more rim light to Brimstone and the other characters to make
the foreground pop out more. when I was little, my dad taught
art classes for kids my age. I've learned some are process, how to draw. So I was asked to draw with other
kids, teach them how to draw. That was my first job. Brandon: Wait how old were you?
Su Ke: Well, I didn’t get paid. Su Ke: Yeah, I was like 8 or 9 years old. Brandon: Oh my. Teaching classes? Teaching other
people how to draw? the other kids. Su Ke: Yeah other kids my same age. Brandon: You're like, at a college
university as a nine year old. Su Ke: Yeah, it was fun. I up res-ed the work from from 72 to 300 (ppi). You know, it gets very blurry. Su Ke: Some of the detail You know, when low res gets-
Brandon: Yup! Brandon: So yeah, I’ve been basically
iterating on Su Ke’s key art. Trying different crops out,
trying different colorways, looking at how we could kind of turn
this into different assets. is there like a version that is
more like our traditional key art? when you log into the game, adding
some like texture, smoke, sparks, bring in that movie magic to it playing
with different layouts and colorways. I think the plan is just to kind of
get the general layout kind of locked, make sure the general
composition feels clean and then we could start adding
those little extra textural elements that amplify this idea of pushing away
a horde of zombies. there's a lot of different little things
we could do in there. But there’s also part of it is also making sure
it kind of still feels like VALORANT, you know, and that is with some of that graphic design. I'd say considering the timeline, the scope, right now is getting to the polished stage. this is also the perfect time
to add more input some reference from Brandon. I know they’re not zombies, but I need to see
what does the group of people look like? borrowing that crawly feeling
put in the background so it feels there's more information,
more things happen in the background. at this stage, it's good to also play with some variant specific styles for VALORANT. for example,
you know, in VALORANT we usually play with the small shapes
like lines, shapes. It's usually formed by rectangles and triangles. When you look at a detail, if you want to
make it a style more VALORANT, keep in mind you’re using less circle shapes,
round shapes, curvy shapes. It’s mainly triangles or rectangles. formed by variant of angular shapes So if you want to make the art look more VALORANT, it's good to keep in mind there’s a shape language specifically
for VALORANT. for example, when you look at the small shapes, it’s formed
by mainly rectangles and triangles especially, the triangles, it's
very important, very iconic for VALORANT. Su Ke: Usually one key art there's tons of assets
Brandon: Oh yeah Su Ke: I forgot, like 20?
Brandon: Oh! Brandon: It just keeps going up and up. you know, this stuff will eventually end
up on, you know, every single video we do for an episode, an act launch. There's an
end card, there’s a logo bumper. And so, you know, when you finish
a VALORANT cinematic at the very end, the Valorant logo *whoosh whoosh* slides
in, that's usually themed to the key art and the essentially brand identity
of the episode and act. Any of the videos
we kind of put out, that key art kind of wraps it all up
and helps put you in the moment. But that's not where it ends. There’s all our social media headers get updated, The box art that you see on Twitch
and YouTube, that needs to be updated the list goes on and on. Vendors, partners, regional teams, they take this key art and they build out activations
like live in-person based around this art. Ultimately, the design kit that I will build off of the work
that we kind of do here. Back in the day, you go to Blockbuster and you're looking for a movie or video game to rent,
you're basing it off the box art, right? And I think the same thing
is still true today with Twitch. When you go to Twitch to browse games,
the box art’s still important, you know, that's still going to be the thing,
for some people, what brings them in to maybe watch
VALORANT for the first time. Rim light is designed to emphasize both shapes because there are a lot of a blocky shapes,
if you only look at the shapes, your audience might find it easy to lose some visual interest.
Catch their eyes, to be fun to look at. So creating this rim light will efficiently Su Ke: separate the different objects
Brandon: It is essentially making it pop. Brandon: The dreaded term of make it pop which we're doing naturally. Brandon: You know
Su Ke: they all kind of experience some hard time, right? They all kind of trained agents. And at this moment,
it looks pretty hardcore. So we use high contrast to create a dramatic moment. It’s perfect. Brandon: Sometimes with every episode we’ll try to create unique graphic shapes that play together well
with whatever's happening in the story, whatever maybe Su Ke kind of created,
maybe like key art kind of started to form like a triangle
that looks like a portal that, we kind of turn into a
graphic element for design. So for right now, I'm
just choosing our defender icon we have two different
like icons that you see up in the UI when you're playing the game attacker
defender. a cool graphic shape that could play off this idea of defending yourself
in a zombie apocalypse. Su Ke: In the whole process I would recommend to keep the layers as simple as can be. For example,
we can always consider especially multi characters composition keep the main layers as a three group: foreground, midground, and background. So whatever we do we can do some type of adjustment. and we can do some treatment
in the background. For example, make the whole background
a little bit darker, a little brighter. You know, I wasn't going to do that. So it's more flexible
and it looks more unified. And midground is definitely the one
we want to work the most. Whatever you put in the midground
are the main characters. give this layer more love. Top layer is mainly for example, now I put more design as top layers, I consider this either this is rib shapes or grave, but they all are foreground. We can separate the layer and
remove that any time. the goal is to emphasize
the depth of the image. And we can consider this group
as foreground zombies as well. You know, I was a sculpture major. Brandon: Ah. Su Ke: Yeah, yeah. Brandon: that makes sense Su Ke: I was a sculpture major. About the landscaper thing I talked about earlier. it was a because did some freelance work,
but my major was sulpture. I think it really helps me
to understanding forms, structures and the lighting a lot.
you know it really helpful. Like in VALORANT, the
way I emphasize lighting is completely just a sculpture
observation method. For example, when I try
to draw a character, especially a VALORANT character, the first thing I would definitely think
about, it's not making The characters more appealing or pretty. I would care about the forms the most. if you want to make it very pretty, you won’t make the lighting, the contrast, good enough. you might lose some opportunity
to make the shapes look three dimensional. You know, enough depth. How do we evaluate a graphic
design to be done or not? Every shape should have a goal. There shouldn't be too
much random shapes. For example, if I want to polish this part, there shouldn't be a lot of transparent colors. We don’t do this. We don’t do transparent colors overlayed. It doesn't look clean. So I want it as clean as can be
because that's our visual pillar. So I want it as clean as it can be because
that's our visual pillar we want to push. You know, we don't use airbrush that much.
If in key art it’s clearly airbrushed, It looks unfinished to me. So yeah, that's a couple of key visual elements. Brandon: when is something finished. it’s tough sometimes because we will want to keep pushing on it for as long as we can. Eventually, we’ve gotta just choose a direction. I know like when Su Ke and I will
both share work to our team, Obviously we always use strategy.
We’re always focused in on the brief and what we're what
we're trying to accomplish. And if everything's
accomplishing the brief, then it becomes kind of subjective. And that's where it can
sometimes be kind of hard to choose that final option before
you kind of go into polish. Su ke: Yeah, yeah.
Brandon: People will just be like, “oh yeah good luck choose one.” I mean but if they’re all accomplishing the goals then . . . Su Ke: Yes. There’s always some artist input. And, you know, 95% is pretty objective 5%, the rest of the 5%
will really depend on different artist. If they feel they have their personal aesthetic that they wanna add, and I think that's the artist’s call.
Enjoy, one more night, etc. Brandon: there's been a few times
where Suki will be like, All right, I think this is final. He sends me the final,
and then the next day, like, actually I changed a few things, like, Oh,
that's okay. Su Ke: Yeah, happened a couple times. Su Ke: Alright Here’s a .PSD
Brandon: Alright Brandon: You wanna see what I’ve been cooking up?
Su Ke: Yeah yeah yup. Su Ke: Nice. love it. Brandon: I'm excited to get
your art in there and See what else we could do. Su Ke: I like the middle one a lot. Brandon: Yeah that's closer to what
we kind of deal with the negative space. Su Ke: Mhm
Brandon: Having that clean backdrop, then Brandon: just kind of building out.
Like the buildings have been destroyed. Brandon: There's rubble.
Su Ke: It could be a mushroom cloud. Su Ke: If you need me.
Brandon: Oooh yeah, yeah. I see. Brandon: I see what you’re saying.
Su Ke: Only if you need me we could make a mushroom cloud. Su Ke: And the even polish the
rim light a little if you want. But I dont know if that’s what we want. We want to give player
a couple of different version. Brandon: Oh, this is good though. I can't believe you just made this. This is so sick. I like the extra kind of lighting
that's kind of happening. Brandon: That’s cool
Su Ke: Yeah. Su Ke: Coming through the different enviornment. Brandon: The ooze from the ribs!
Su Ke: Uh-huh, uh-huh. Brandon: That’s awesome.
Su Ke: Do you have the layers? Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Su Ke: You can turn off different layers. Brandon: Oh, nice. perfect.
Su Ke: Yeah there’s a couple of them. Brandon: If I need this kind of-
Su Ke: This is the classic version. Brandon: Gotcha, right there yeah.
Su Ke: Yeah yeah. Brandon Oh this looks so good.
Su Ke: How many assets do we want to give players? Brandon: As many as possible. the wallpapers,
the phone papers, the the backdrops. Alright, well, I'm going to probably start
putting this in the layout and just Brandon: do you think I focus on this one?
Su Ke: You think you need a green light? Brandon: No, no, I could use what you have. I'll put all the art in there
and I should be able to kind of. Su Ke: Okay. Nice.
Brandon: Yeah Su Ke: I love the smokes. Brandon: This is kind of me quickly mocking it in. Su Ke: Mhm
Brandon: You know, we quickly talked about like we probably wouldn't use an airbrush. Brandon: We probably wouldn't use an airbrush. You know, the smoke kind of almost starts to conflict with Brandon: the flat blocky like, you know,
Su Ke: Naw, this is a movie poster. Brandon: Right but we're doing a movie
poster, so it's a little different. We can get away with that kind of stuff. Brandon: Also I think adding like-
Su Ke: The Last Revive Su Ke: I love this
Brandon: - the sparks and, you know, it’s a staple of the movie poster, bringing in that like little bit of energy and flare to kind of bring you in and add to that chaos but even just clean I mean Brandon: That is so epic.
Su Ke: Yeah! Su Ke: We’re getting there, right?
Brandon: Yup. Brandon: I’ll put them into this layout.
I think this is kind of the one that's More of our usual VALORANT style
with the the 16:9 crop. Su Ke: Yeah. Brandon: I got it in there. Messing with the color, Brandon: I think both kind of work.
Su Ke: Yeah. Brandon: What do you think about this line?
“Never back down until you're dead again” That's . . . yes, it’s bad. Su Ke: I love it. Brandon: Yeah okay it’s bad in a good way. Cool. I think we could call it here with the idea that we would take this further,
you know, would go a lot further. We would probably do
a lot more iterations on color. This would turn this into like,
I think we talked about it before. You know, this gets converted about
probably like 50 different art pieces. Su Ke: One more thing, sorry. Brandon: Oh, yeah.
Su Ke: I want Sage’s earrings as green color. Brandon: Oh, oh.
Su Ke: So in the background they’re gonna pop up a little more. Brandon: I’ve got you. We take that gradient map and just knock it out. Su Ke: But yeah that’s basically it.
We did it really fast already. Su Ke: No that’s it man.
Brandon: There we go. advice for up and coming designers: start getting in there, get your hands dirty,
watch those YouTube tutorials, learn the techniques. Early on, I think
in probably both of our careers, we tried to mimic the stuff that we liked
or we were inspired by. So you know, having that passion
and just continually pushing yourself, pursuing it. Always look at
ways to kind of improve your process. Just keep getting better and you'll get there. Su Ke: for whoever in the audience are aspiring artists willing to join the game industry, practice how do you visualize something in your mind. That's the most a fun thing as an illustrator, I would say. And for the craft technique,
I would just say I personally, I really care about lighting
in the art and whatever the style is, and it helps you form the shapes
and the structure clearer. You can really try to get
familiar with sculpture. You can start with some really soft clay and try to form some shapes and put it
under the lighting that you will see change. And understanding the three dimensional stuff. And when you try to draw
that one on the picture, you will see something differently. Brandon: If you want to see more of my work,
I'm on Twitter, or X, as @BrandonMeier I also am on Instagram as @Brandon_Meier_Made Su Ke: (in English) And if you want to see
more of my work, you can check out my Twitter and Instagram,
and ArtStation account. If you want to see more of my process,
you can check out the videos on my YouTube channel. Brandon: Thank you guys for for joining us. Hope you got some insight
into how VALORANT key art is born made and some of the processes. Hopefully you guys learned some
cool new techniques and you can apply those to
some of your art going forward. Su Ke: How we iterated art,
how we communicated ideas, and have some fun as an artist. Brandon: That's right. One team, one dream Brandon: Yes!
Su Ke: Yeah dude! Brandon: Let’s just see what the
other ones were just so we’re sure we got the right one. Su Ke: Yeah let’s see. Uh . . . this is haunted vampire hunters. Wow, this is cool. Brandon: Could be good, could be good.
Su Ke: Yeah. Su Ke: And, uh, train ride murder mystery. Brandon: It could have
been like a clue style, classy . . . I could see Brim with a little
cigar or pipe or something. Su Ke: Maybe a lot of detective costumes.
