NLA Super Smash Bros. Ultimate PR Graphics
Test your mettle in a North Louisiana Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournament!
I have had the honor of assisting with creating several PR, or Player Ranking, graphics for the North Louisiana Super Smash Bros. Ultimate community. After each season of gameplay, the top 10 players in the region are decided by a council based on a number of factors, including top performance, frequency of play, number of wins vs. losses, and more. After the 10 are decided, they also get to suggest ideas for the graphic and then vote on their favorite. Here are some below.
The first graphic project I have assisted on was themed around Steamboat Willie, as it was around the time that Steamboat Willie entered public domain. In each PR graphic, the top 10 player’s characters are displayed, so we wanted to illustrate them in classic rubber hose animation fashion. Care was also taken to replicate the “scratchier” inking style of the background vs. the smoother inked cels of the characters. The grain and slight vignette was also taken into account.
The background and boat were illustrated by my collaborator, Tyler Crochet. On top of this, I sketched each character and lined them so that they look like cels. Certain characters were also specifically modeled after certain scenes or characters in the original Steamboat Willie short. Grain and other textures were added, plus the lines of the characters were lowered to gray instead of pure black. Typesetting was then added on top of this, with a Mickey Mouse parody font and a more classical serif for the player names.
The next PR Graphic I’ve assisted on was themed around the Kingdom Hearts game series. For this, the idea was to have the player characters dressed as members of Organization XIII, from the game, and sitting on their iconic throne-like seats. We also wanted to replicate the typography used in the trailer where all of the Organization members’ names are introduced, using the same gold glow.
For the illustrated elements, we also wanted to replicate the art style of Tetsuya Nomura, the Director and Character Designer of Kingdom Hearts. His particular art style has black lineart with many points, and stark shading with erased edges for highlights. The characters were sketched by Tyler Crochet and lined and colored by myself. For the backgrounds, their thrones were rendered completely in Adobe Illustrator, using 3D settings. After the type was set, everything was compiled.
The style of the North Louisiana PR logo in this graphic particularly was inspired by a combination of the original Kingdom Hearts logo’s background, and the Kingdom Hearts III logo’s typeface. We thought the shade of blue was more iconic, while the style of the newer game’s logo was more relevant. Both also include blue tones, so they complimented each other well. Originally we wanted to use the brushed steel texture on the blue heart as seen on the original, but we opted out of it in favor for a more subtle gradient to boost contrast.