Game Concept Design

Tencent Timi

Call of Duty Mobile

Activision & Tencent J3

My role

Concept Artist

2D Character Designer

@2D Art Team

@Tencent Timi J3

Timeline

2020-2021

Design Flow

Character design research

2D concept sketching

Concept refining

3D modeling



Software used

Adobe Photoshop

Blender

Marvelous Designer

Zbrush


Background

Started at Call of Duty Mobile working as a concept designer in 2020…

In 2020, I felt excited to join Tencent Timi Studios J3 department to develop Call of Duty Mobile (CODM), one of my favorite first-person shooting(FPS) games since my childhood. I participated in creating various characters, skin, and prop designs under the art director's brief. Through this valuable working experience, I gained an unparalleled feeling of satisfaction that honed my career path as a designer in the game-related field.

Esther

The first character I designed

I usually start my concept work from very rough sketches addressing the different directions without taking care of too much details. At the same time, I also conduct a through research toward the design directions and therefore build up an image library in Eagle, so that I'll have a solid understanding of the basic configuration, and also set a good foundation in the next steps flexing out the details.

Starting the design from

I usually start with the design flow from aggressively collecting images for reference to very rough sketches.

Esther

Final 2D concept deliverables

Trailer

Final in-game display

Character Design

Other character concepts I participated in

Skin Design

Other concepts I participated in

Some take aways

Photo of the Tencent Timi J3 office, shoot on 2021

Some takeaways…

1/ The pandemic strengthened my commitment to Metaverse design

When I started my career two years ago, I could never foresee how the pandemic had confirmed my commitment to be a designer architecting the Metaverse. I began my journey as a game concept designer at Tencent Timi Studio, where I was actively involved in developing games for socially isolated people, in which they are enabled to interact with each other in the collective virtual world. I witnessed how games, being the crux of Metaverse at the current stage, empowered my art and design to be relocated in a more pragmatic and interactive position, aiding people through hard times with casual fun.


2/ In game, art and design became more interactive and pragmatic

This working experience made me realized a successful game is the culmination of art and technology, which intrigued me to hone a deeper understanding of the fundamentals of emerging design technologies which leads my way to Harvard Design Engineering program.