One of my first tasks as Art Lead at Tether Studios was to revitalize all of the visuals in the game Bubble Cube. The original game was little more than programmer art. I completely reworked and implemented all in-game assets and animated an entirely new set of effects, added stylized backgrounds for the different game modes, and crafted an all-new cohesive UI. I was also responsible for all assets outside of the game itself, including game logo, app icons, app store images, banners, and web site assets.

The resulting reskinning of the game resulted in huge wins for the title, raising revenue, retention, and increasing LTV (lifetime value) returns from all players by over 50% and doubling the LTV from paying players.

Bubble Cube 2 was so successful that Tether decided to try to turn it into a stand-alone free-to-play game, Bubble World. I again served as the Art Lead, defining the look and feel for an entire world and characters to go along with the style that I’d defined for the earlier Bubble Cube game. The first version of this project had players traveling through space-time with a time-traveling rabbit named Dart.

A later iteration of the game discarded Dart and her story to instead focus on player progression and competition, with player customization options serving as competition prizes. I created most of the UI and illustration for these new PvP and Events screens, but the rest of the game’s UI and UX was created by Caryn Ruah under the Art Direction of Kyle Van Meurs.

Bubble World also required dozens of zones – locations throughout space and time – for the player to visit and collect objects from. I personally designed and illustrated the first dozen zones and when we needed more throughput, I created style guides, identified and tested several outsourcing studios, and managed the entire art outsourcing pipeline for the project.