The Art
ofJohn Dee
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UI STYLE GUIDE
I was the Lead UI Artist on this project, and during development, I pushed hard on various ideas and also respected the time and scope we were up against. We jumped into creating inspiration buckets and building out how we were going to build out our game. This is a quick overview of the visual language we have built for the UI on Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2. The overall goal is to provide an artistic guide to the inspiration and culture of skateboarding from the past to the present and how it influences the art and design choices we made while developing this game.
ESTABLISHING TONE AND RESPECTING LEGACY
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In the early stages of UI development, one of our key concepts was to integrate iconic skateboard art based on the boards players choose in-game. This art served as a visual anchor for the UI, prominently featured in the upper third of the game’s menus. Our goal was to fuse the player's choice of board with the game’s visual identity, creating a seamless connection between gameplay and interface.
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From the beginning, we aimed to tap into our personal memories of skateboarding—how it shaped our youth and influenced our lives. At the same time, it was crucial to honor the modern skater and recognize how skate culture has evolved. Balancing nostalgia with a contemporary perspective became central to our design process.
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Reconnecting with the contemporary skateboard industry presented its own challenges. Skate culture and athletes have significantly impacted both the skateboarding and video game audiences today. To capture this shift, we immersed ourselves in skate videos, contests, sponsorships, and the design and manufacturing of boards. We also felt it was essential to respect the legacy of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series, aiming to bring a high-profile look to our game using next-gen technology.
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During our research, we observed a remarkable leap in how skate videos are filmed. Today, 4K HDR drones capture footage in ways that were unimaginable with older camcorders. These drone shots offer fresh perspectives and dynamics that have captivated modern audiences. A standout example is the video We Are Blood, which showcases the evolution of skateboarding cinematography and the cultural shift that has accompanied it.
The Ink and Silkscreen Approach
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One of the defining elements of creating an authentic approach for Tony Hawk Pro Skater was getting to the origins of the creation of the skateboard and how the artwork impacted so many areas of the culture. We watched countless videos on skateboarding and the production of skateboard decks, wheels, trucks, and clothing.
Going from traditional silkscreen printing to Hot press production, we found various ways of how the boards get created and shipped to all the skate shops across the world and we were able to reproduce these techniques in our game engine to get them as close to the final product that you would see in the real world.
Intro Movie Concepts and Splash Screen
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We began looking into various concepts that reflected the older intro movies from the previous games in the series. The first video we made was a remake of the classic THPS2 intro with updated skating and iconography that helped recreate to look and feel from that game. It did the job of establishing the tone we were looking for, but felt it was missing something that could make this a great artistic start.
After we created this video, we decided to explore more with the concept of just the video footage of common skaters with the name tags of the Pros to the games current cast.
We also sprinkled in video shots of skateboard deck production lines that showcased both pressed wood board creation and silkscreen work that would be printing on the decks. This video would bleed right into our frontend menu and be an establishing focal point on how our UI dashboard was going to look and animate based off the silkscreen ink look that we wanted as the anchor for all our UI screens.
Once we began to home in our specific art style for the game, we moved into establishing what our splash screen was going to be like visual. When I was researching the skateboard videos that companies were making, we noticed a huge amount of camera work that was happening in 2019 used blue tooth enabled drones to shoot footage for the skate parks in ways that have never been done before. This was a huge revelation to us and opened so many doors to how we could show the games visual tone of a skate community that has exploded across the world.
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We ended up settling on a Birdseye view of the Venice Beach Skate park as our main inspiration that camera panned around the park waiting for the user to press start to play the game
UX Wireframe design and Creative Bucket art
We had early ideas of how we wanted to modernize the games UI/UX and to bring some of the creative perspectives that came with creating skateboards for the key audience. Thhis was something evident and tied to the roots of being a skateboarder.
