Peter Barnard Art Director
Stampede, a 60 player kart racing live game, was a real joy to work on, the goal was to create a visually distinctive and accessible art style. It's roots were in street art, stickerbomb, vinyl toys and pop culture giving it a vibrant and playful appeal. Starting from just myself I gradually built the art team up focusing on a functional game as I developed the art style.
My work covered creating concept art, gameplay mockups, key images, marketing artwork as well as directing and mentoring the art team, working with external teams for marketing content, working with product to plan multiple seasons and in game key IP activations.
During production I led the development of in-engine tooling for creating assets for marketing content – this enabled us to produce material at a cadence needed for a live title.
During production I worked on many concepts for different track themes, these served as inspiration for the both the art and design team
Licenced IP crossovers was always a core part of the plan for this title, I worked on many mockups to explore how a broad range of IP could have looked in the game
Players being able to express themselves via costumes, karts and karts skins was a big part of the ask from the visual design. My focus was on delivering content that resonated with a wide audience, inspired collection and added value for the player. Starting with refence, creating concepts, guiding concept artists, managing work through full production to review and refinement in engine. Here is a selection of work from the art team.
Results podium mockup. To help the UI team progress work in this important area I created this mockup using game assets to sell the idea of all racers being present for this sequence, regardless of where they placed.
