by Kirk Wallace & Latham Arnott
client - Psyonix & Bento gg
Production agency BentoGG and game developer Psyonix saw our Rocket League fan art from 2015 (nearly 7 years ago) and asked to partner with us on an intro animation for their Collegiate Rocket League series (CRL).
For those who don't know, Rocket League is a competitive soccer video game featuring supersonic acrobatic cars that can fly. A game Latham and I have played 100+ hours of.
Concept & Story
Kirk had this visual in his head from "An Extremely Goofy Movie" when Max is hurrying to get to class on a skateboard. There's probably some mixed memories but we were loving the urgency of grabbing a backpack, papers flying, and dashing out to get to class on time. It felt very collegiate.
So with that, the story goes: our main character (a purple car), spends too much time selecting a hat to wear, and finally having to just ditch the outfit and start driving to class, passing various landmarks from the colleges involved in the event and eventually getting to the stadium, ready to play.
Rough Storyboards
Storyboards
Fortunately, the client was very open conceptually and wanted us to have some fun. Seems to be a major benefit to working in gaming, everything is fun and wild in nature. These storyboards served as a quick timing for us as we were held to 30 seconds.
Quick Boardomatic to get a senses of timing
We wanted to make sure there was some fun camera work to keep a dynamic feeling where the car is always a bit on edge, ready for another stunt. A quick zoom out of the style frames helps us visualize when we want to pull way out or tighten up.
Art Process
We really wanted to try to find a way to break the expectations of what a 2D Rocket League looks like. There's such a strong and highly identifiable visual language and brand developed for the game over the last 10 years. That's such a rich soil to get creative in. How far can we venture stylistically while still having fans immediately recognize it as Rocket League.
To do this, we drew as realistically first, keeping proportions really close, and then started playing a lot with perspective, removing detail, focusing on a strong silhouette and slowly drifting as far as we could until it wasn't working, then bumped back a bit. Goldilocks.
The client had a lot of trust with us in our vision for a flat, 2d, low frame rate style of Rocket League.
Sketch to final from procreate to illustrator to photoshop
Style Frames
Stylistically we wanted a warm, friendly, cozy atmosphere that reminded us of 90's Nicktoons, Sesame Street, Do The Right Thing, etc.
