Killer Instinct Anniversary Edition

Art Direction, UI Art, UI development

Goals/ For the 10th Anniversary of the release of Killer Instinct, we were asked to remaster the previous release by up-ressing the art from HD to 4K, as well as giving the UI a new color scheme that fit the anniversary theme. The project had a tight timeline, so we had to look for ways to automate as many processes as possible.

The project called for scaling the art assets from HD resolution to 4K while also recoloring them with a new color scheme.

Process/ The UI for Killer Instinct had been developed in Flash and Scaleform. We developed a tool that would take the existing .swf files, extract the XML data from the .flas and then multiply position and size values of all the assets by 2. It would then resave the .swf file, and produce an Excel document that would show both the previous and updated values as well as list out all the art assets that were exported in the .swf file. This document could be used as a checklist that we could use to verify the scaled-up .swf files.

At the same time we proposed various color schemes for the UI, recommending a shift from green and silver to purple and gold to better communicate the anniversary aspect of the release. Once the client was happy with the color scheme, we developed Photoshop actions that would take the art assets, scale them up to 4K resolution, and color-shift them to the new palette. In some cases we had to redraw/render new assets because the previous ones were too small to scale up.

Along with the static art assets, we also needed to scale the videos that were displayed behind the UI as well as all the cut scenes that played throughout the game.

Updated Single Player menu.

Character Portraits/ During development of the UI, the client suggested updating the images of the characters that appeared on various screens, most notably in the Character Select screen, as another way to express that the game was remastered. Beyond just scaling them up to 4K resolution, having all new portraits would be a surprise for legacy players.

We had a concept artist work on a couple of portraits to show the client the direction we wanted to take them. Once they saw the higher level of detail and more dramatic poses and lighting, the client agreed to the new art direction.

We posed the characters in-engine and captured various angles that the artist could use to render the new portraits. Every week we’d present the new portraits to the client for feedback and approval.