Apex Legends
Role: Senior UI Artist II
Timeline: From February 2022 to Today
As a live service game, Apex operates on a schedule of seasonal content. Every three months a new season starts; part of the creative output involves researching features, characters and narrative beats, weapons, and marketing themes to inform a logo design.
With new characters come new abilities; the creative challenge is to understand and play the game with the new characters as they evolve during design phases. Abilities require a series of icons to represent their in-game effect, in abstracted and modern white and grey shapes. Characters also receive graphic art face icons, to be readily identifiable at a glance.
Screen layouts and mockups balance an information- and data-heavy communication with aesthetics and moving pieces. Apex Legends has a lot to tell the user, and the UI art challenge is to accommodate that by using consistent colors, spacing, animation, and design language across a multitude of interactions.
Animated content in Apex UI is used judiciously to emphasize high-value rewards and important gameplay events. Typically animations for Apex are created in either AfterEffects, for more complex and dynamic screens, or using in-house animation tools for HUD elements and badges.
Working with outsourcing partners, including changing partners during the live service schedule, required providing guidelines and style guides for creating badges. Demonstrating what good looks like and what to avoid helped keep art consistent and predictable.
