In-Game Assets
Role: Creative Direction, Art Direction, Illustration, Design
Tools Used: Photoshop, Figma
Context
During my time at Team Liquid I have had the opportunity to help bring the organization’s brand directly into several major esports titles through official in-game cosmetics. These projects included a VALORANT player card, League of Legends emotes, Overwatch cosmetic assets, and Dota 2 sprays and wallpapers.
Unlike traditional marketing assets, these items live permanently inside the games themselves. Each project required close collaboration with both external artists and game developers to ensure that the final assets fit within each title’s visual style while still representing Team Liquid’s identity.
Creative Direction
For most of these projects my role was focused on art direction rather than direct production. I sourced and collaborated with professional artists, developing creative briefs that included moodboards, thumbnail sketches, and visual references to clearly communicate the desired direction.
Because every game has its own art style and technical constraints, the creative challenge was translating the Team Liquid brand into forms that felt authentic within each game’s visual ecosystem.
Execution
Once artists began production, I guided their work through iterative feedback and overpainting to refine compositions, character expressions, and stylistic details. This process required close communication with both the artists and the developers responsible for approving the assets.
Throughout development I helped navigate internal approvals at Team Liquid as well as external approvals from game studios, ensuring that each asset met both creative expectations and technical requirements before release.
Some instances required an even more hands-on approach. Whether it was due to tight timelines or lack of availability, I would need to do the final refinements myself to make sure the project was executed to the highest possible degree of polish.
Results
Although each game required a different visual approach, the final assets consistently integrated Team Liquid’s identity into the visual language of each title.
Luckily the developers also allowed us some degree of creative freedom to explore a variety of concepts until we found something that we felt would land well with our fans and the player base as a whole.
Impact
Team Liquid’s in-game assets have received a lot praise over the years, particularly from our fans who love having an opportunity to show off their fandom in-game.
One of the League of Legends emotes released through this process became the best-selling esports emote in the game’s history, demonstrating the effectiveness of the creative direction and the strong connection between the assets and the fanbase.
For me, these projects were an opportunity to work closely with talented artists and major game studios while guiding the creative process from concept to final implementation.