This project was done for the fun-as-hell free-to-play mech game, Hawken, available on Steam.
I took the ‘garage’ look of the game and extended it to the overlay itself. I figured the main design could take place in a hangar environment, and to that end I produced a hilariously juvenile sketch outlining the idea to the Hawken folks.
Really, the most amazing part of the project is that they were still interested after I sent them this image.
I started by exporting a number of models from the game’s Unreal engine files, which was a fairly time consuming feat at first, as I had absolutely zero familiarity with the tools, engine, or formats. After a few days of persistence, I was able to get what I needed out of the game files and rendered them with animations in 3d Studio Max to separate layers. This was all then composited to After Effects.
Ultimately I ended up with what I thought was a pleasantly subtle hangar scene, with a few of the in-game ‘mechanic’ models going about some idle animations:
After a brief review with the Hawken staff, they settled on the exact social media links they wanted on the hangar floors.
The ultimate layout for twitch is, itself, a composite of a number of layers. The main ‘broadcast’ window is in the left quadrant of the screen, but in the event the streamers had to take a break, pause, or otherwise turn their video feed off, I created a live background with venting steam and some drones tooling by. I was able to get the Hawken staff set up with the overlay comfortably in advance of their ‘debut’ stream, and had a lot of fun with this project in the process.
