Art Lead Work
As a lead artist on numerous titles for Big Fish Casino, I was responsible for guiding the visual development of a wide range of features, from themed slot content to mini-games. My role included directing outsource studios, providing detailed feedback on final renders and animations, and ensuring consistent quality across multiple concurrent projects.
A key challenge was working within the established visual language of legacy titles while pushing creative boundaries under tight deadlines. As a team, we aimed to bend genres and subvert expectations by introducing novel themes and visual styles, while still delivering content that resonated with our core audience and met product goals.
In addition to leading art direction, I contributed hands-on animation and asset creation for featured games and LiveOps events, working closely with cross-functional teams to bring new ideas from concept to completion.
The goal of this project was to make a Thanksgiving-themed reskin of an existing slot machine with a metamorphic feature where three characters grow in size.
Thanksgiving is already a challenging slot machine theme to make interesting, and the added gameplay constraints posed extra hurdles. I decided to theme the game around a Thanksgiving parade, with balloon mascots that expand to build anticipation.
I knew that this slot machine would have a summer theme, and an expanding symbol with a character on it. That concept lent itself to a vintage pinup aesthetic, which I embraced.
To enhance the summer vibe, I set the game in 1950s Palm Springs, capturing its heyday as a celebrity vacation hotspot. The art showcases a playful mid-century kitsch style, with plenty of terrazzo textures, while the Hollywood celebrity theme infuses the game with aspirational glamour and luxury that slot players love.
Final renderings by 1518
This Halloween game is a reskinned slot machine featuring a prize wheel mechanic. I envisioned a circus/haunted carnival theme and transformed the prize wheel to resemble a circus knife-throwing wheel. Players responded positively, enjoying both the mechanic and the unique theme.
I created the original concept and drawings for this machine, and Present Creative handled the final renderings.
Examples of some of the two dozen titles I oversaw as art lead:
As Art Lead, I designed and oversaw the development of flagship mini-game features, including the pachinko-style "Droppin’ Fortunes" and the scalable picker-game "Chance!". These features were designed to deepen player engagement by using tokens earned in core gameplay to unlock bonus rounds with escalating rewards.
My process involved close collaboration with UX and design to establish the entire player journey, from initial storyboards and animatics to final asset delivery. For "Chance!", I architected a flexible thematic system, moving beyond an initial fortune-teller concept to a model that supported diverse seasonal reskins. This strategic pivot to a modular approach, exemplified by the successful holiday launch with a Mrs. Claus mascot, ensured long-term creative agility and player novelty.
Beyond asset creation, my key contribution was defining robust production pipelines and authoring detailed documentation, ensuring efficient execution across art and engineering teams. This work serves as a case study in leading art development for live-service games, designing for seasonal content cycles, and leveraging thematic systems to sustain player engagement.
Storyboards created for Chance! minigame
Animatic created for Chance! minigame
Original mascot design to fit the tarot theme
Set of mascot character designs that were part of focus group testing.
The first iteration of Chance! was Christmas themed, here is an art mockup I created.
Later an infinity mode was added to Chance!, these storyboards were created to show the new sequence
The Dino Diner themed Chance! Final art by Matt Burchstead.
Mock-up and styleboard for a pachinko-style feature, Droppin' Fortunes!
Final art mock-up for the pachinko-style feature, Droppin' Fortunes!