Suicide Squad Environment Art Direction

For two years (2018-2020) I led a hybrid team of artists and oversaw production of numerous interior spaces handling both the core architecture and props that decorated each space. Environments included several key hubs including the entirety of the Hall of Justice alongside key story interiors and boss arenas (Gizmo's Garage, WayneTech, Lex's Lab, and Batcave). My team was typically provided some very loose painterly mood & feel concepts and simple blockouts (often Sketchup mockups), and it was my responsibility to propose prop lists, divide the space into assets, gather reference and/or concept unique assets, and establish production methods for efficient and performant architectural modeling and materials (creating our own master materials and decal workflow to achieve the visual target and minimize drawcalls and texture samples). 

I spent a month in Rocksteady's studio in London, learning their working practices and establishing relationships with the key personnel, and then returned to our studio in Portland where I built and led a hybrid team. We were hooked directly into the main Perforce and other dev environments and trusted to act like an extension of their London studio.

Beyond planning, managing, creating production guides, and providing direction for all aspects of the core environment and props, I also handled a number of Tech Art tasks including creating various master materials that minimized drawcalls and texture samples as well as more bespoke material effects such as vertex animated meshes, blurred glass shaders, interior mapping, faked opaque “translucency” materials, and others. I was the lead problem solver in charge of planning and coming up with unique performant solutions while also providing feedback, paintovers, and art direction to my artists and we were trusted to come up with intelligent solutions to art production.

On the broader production side, I was also in charge of managing our internal asset tracking as well as Rocksteady’s Shotgun asset tracker. These Producer level tasks involved breaking larger chunks of work into discrete assets, budgeting those assets, creating production estimates and timelines, and assigning and managing artist schedules.

Each image below leads to its own gallery for each environment