IRONCLAD TACTICS

I was the Art Director, Lead Artist, and Animator for Ironclad Tactics.

Ironclad Tactics is a fast-paced, card-based tactics game by Zachtronics featuring steam-powered robots in the American Civil War. The story is told through an in-game 100-page, full-color graphic novel.

My responsibilities included:

- Overall Art Direction
- In-game and story Character Design / Visual Development
- 2D Character Rigging
- 2D Character Animation
- 2D Effects and Particle Animation
- Weapon Design and Animation
- Storyboarding
- Pencils and/or Clean-up on 100 in-game comic pages
- Managed a team of 12 comic artists to produce in-game story pages.
- All marketing materials and key art, including gameplay and teaser trailers.

Gameplay Trailer

Story Character Art

As Lead Character Artist, it was my responsibility to give each of the characters a uniqueness and personality. Their personalities carry through to the in-game comic, and are exhibited on their faces and in their mannerisms. The various waist-up character portraits are in-game talking heads, used for story elements before a level begins.

Talking head inks provided by Beverly Heath, with colors by Kyle Steed.

Unit Character Art

Every unit starts as concept art, and is then basically turned into a puppet to be rigged in After Effects. Here are some examples of unit concept art, and the in-game versions. In all, there are over 60 different units in the game.

Weapon Art

I was also responsible for all weapon design and animation. Each weapon has a unique animation, and there are about 40 weapons in-game.

Character Animation

Every unit in the game was hand-painted in Photoshop, and then rigged in After Effects using an IK system. Each unit was then animated, and exported into a sprite sheet. There are over 100 different animations in the game.

Effects Animation

All effects animations were hand-painted frame-by-frame, composited in After Effects, and exported to sprite sheets. There are about 30 different special effects in-game.

Story Pages: In-game Comic

The 100-page in-game comic was a massive undertaking, but is a notable and defining feature of Ironclad Tactics. A total of 12 people worked for 2 years to produce the full-color pages. I was responsible for story production and management, storyboarding, layout, pencils, and clean-up, to ensure all characters and locations were on-model. Speech bubbles and text were added in-engine.

Layouts and pencils were also provided by Lisa Price, Steffani Charano and Kyle Steed.
Inks were provided by Beverly Heath and myself.
Page flats provided by Mayang Sari and Chris Balcom.
Colors provided by Kyle Steed, Steffani Charano, Aimee Zhou, and Kieran Lampert.