Gods Unchained Emotes
Illustrator/Designer
The Project
This project focused on illustrating six new emotes for the Gods Unchained Battle Pass. The existing emote set leaned heavily into a playful, cartoony, animal-themed style, which had proven popular with players. Building on that foundation, I created three new animal-themed emotes to maintain continuity, while also introducing three lore-inspired emotes to begin shifting the visual direction closer to the game’s narrative identity.
The goal was to expand the emotional and expressive range of emotes without alienating the existing audience. By balancing familiarity with deeper lore elements, the new set supported player expression while gradually evolving the tone of cosmetic content within the Battle Pass.
Challenges
- Maintaining stylistic consistency with the existing emote set, ensuring new emotes felt cohesive alongside previously created assets.
- Introducing lore-driven designs that aligned with the game’s narrative while still reading clearly and quickly as emotes.
- Designing within strict dimensional constraints, ensuring each emote rendered correctly and remained readable in-game.
- Delivering assets within tight launch timelines, aligning final designs with the Battle Pass release schedule.
Objectives
- Gather and evaluate player feedback, alongside research into comparable games, to inform the tone, style, and subject matter of the emotes.
- Explore concepts through early sketches, testing ideas for readability, expression, and alignment with both playful and lore-driven themes.
- Produce final illustrated emotes following approval, ensuring visual polish and consistency with the game’s art direction.
- Deliver production-ready assets suitable for in-game implementation and marketing use, aligned with Battle Pass launch requirements.
Process and Research
The process began with research into player feedback and existing emotes, as well as a review of similar systems in comparable games. This helped establish expectations around tone, readability, and how players used emotes during gameplay.
Based on these insights, I explored ideas through early sketches, focusing on expressive silhouettes and clear visual cues that would read instantly in-game. Once the direction was agreed upon, I refined the concepts into more detailed drafts.
Final rendering and illustration were completed in Photoshop, ensuring each emote met quality, dimensional, and stylistic requirements. The completed assets were delivered in time for Battle Pass launch, ready for both in-game implementation and marketing use.
Results
The new emotes were well received by the community, particularly as the existing set had not been updated for some time. Player feedback indicated that the additions felt fresh while still fitting naturally within the game, and they became a contributing factor in players’ decisions to purchase the Battle Pass.
Because more emotes were created than initially required, the work also provided lasting value beyond the initial release. Additional emotes continue to be rolled out with subsequent Battle Pass seasons, extending the impact of the original designs.
For me, this project was especially rewarding. As my first time creating emotes for the game, seeing them embraced and actively used by players in live gameplay was a strong validation of the approach and execution.
Gallery
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