Hello! Welcome to my personal page.
Here I will tell you a little about myself and show how the last 20 years used to be.
My name is Ivan. I am an art director, art manager, lead artist, 3D modeler, and UI artist.
Since 2004, I have been creating graphics for games and managing Art departments from 10 to 100 specialists in various fields and specializations.
I have a huge amount of experience in 2D, 3D, and vector graphics, as well as animations, visual effects, and motion design.
If you are interested in learning more about my track record, welcome to my Linkedin
Location: Batumi, Georgia
Candy Land: Merge NETFLIX
2024
At the outset of this project, I took on the roles of Art Lead, 2D Artist, 3D Artist and mentor, collaborating with two 3D Modelers to establish the visual style and its foundations. Once the initial phase of artistic research what you can see was completed, the main art team commenced work based on my conceptual framework. After finalizing the art style, I transitioned to COO responsibilities
As always, all techniques are mixed: 2D, 3D, and vector. The main thing is that it looks organic and in the same style
VECTOR
2D
3D
Another interesting point that I would like to highlight is the characters!
My involvement in this work included art direction, extensive feedback, overpainting, lighting, and final revisions. The result is such beauty!
CANDYLAND - PRESENT and CANDYLAND - RETRO: CANDYLAND and HASBRO and all related trademarks and logos are trademarks of Hasbro, Inc. ©2024 Hasbro.
The next video mockup was created by me in Spine 2D for elaborating on the concept and demonstrating the basic scenarios of how game pieces behave on the board during merging and moving
Monumental canvas — Loading screen! Naturally, teamwork.
My contribution lay in art direction, working with composition, color, light, and final assembly with post-processing and overpainting
CANDYLAND - PRESENT and CANDYLAND - RETRO: CANDYLAND and HASBRO and all related trademarks and logos are trademarks of Hasbro, Inc. ©2024 Hasbro.
Of course, it was important not to forget about the "zoo" of various screen sizes and resolutions
CANDYLAND - PRESENT and CANDYLAND - RETRO: CANDYLAND and HASBRO and all related trademarks and logos are trademarks of Hasbro, Inc. ©2024 Hasbro.
The concept of the UI window wraps up this section, and we will move on
Unannounced project
in Merge-3 genre
2023
At the start of this project, I independently worked out the style and laid the foundations of the visual style (sketches, 3D, 2D, UI). After this stage was completed, the Art team started to work with my base. After scaling up the team, I took on the role of 3D lead and Art Director while continuing to model, paint, deal with UI, and assemble the game locations together
A few artists can share their liking for UI, but I love it!
I like fiddling with interface elements
As in the case of UI, rarely anyone likes to deal with game figures and for this reason, I had to get my hands on these tasks from time to time. Some of the objects presented below I modeled on my own, and all the figures I corrected at the 3D stage, most of them were colored by me, and absolutely all the objects I "polished" at the final stage
3D City Builder
in Casual style
2022
The last, unfinished project of the Pictolabra studio in which I was the founder and Art Director. The studio lasted from the end of 2019 to 2022 inclusive.
After the start of the war, Pictolabra ceased to exist, and the remnants of the team were relocated to Batumi.
The city builder could turn out to be interesting and noticeable in its niche, at least it looks pretty!
At the start of this project, I was also involved in developing the style and creating the first game assets, and then scaled the ready-made solutions for the team and trained 3D modelers.
In the process of pre-production, I came up with my own way of texturing low poly models, which someone probably used before me ;)
The essence of the approach is to create textures immediately in the required, small size, using the tools that allow you to create very clear, sharp textures, almost pixel art. Tools such as a pencil or hard-edged brush
In this case, the interpolation/blending of pixels with each other occurs only once when the model is rendered in the game engine and thus the texture looks as sharp as possible at a minimum size
Slideshow at the end of the conversation about this project and we move on
City Builder
Reskin project
2021
Project in the retro setting of the Victorian era and the corresponding retro style
The marketing screenshots above partially used purchased models, as it was necessary to quickly conduct marketing tests. But not all models were bought on the digital stock.
The following is a retrofuturistic bucket wheel excavator - the main element of the screen with a quarry, which was made by me personally
In continuation, some screenshots from the game
Of course, I did not work on the project alone, but with a team, and a reasonable question may arise - how significant is my contribution?
Very significant! Let's take a look at an example. The following is an image created at the very beginning by the team.
The result turned out to be unsatisfactory. Just giving feedback, in that case, wasn't enough
FAIL!
There is only one way out - to take everything into my own hands and work out the style and technical solutions on my own
Well, then the transfer of experience, training, feedback, and constant work with the team, not only as a Lead but also as a performer.
And the result was not long in coming! After a couple of weeks, the team picked up the style and assets began to appear no worse, and often better, than my first pictures
Match-3 & Mahjong
projects
2019-2021
Pictolabra's first projects in the Match-3 and Mahjong genres with nice graphics, especially when it comes to graphics related to game mechanics, and excellent VFX
As for the Match-3 / Mahjong chips, I don’t trust anyone. I like to mess with them by myself :)
And now about VFX. Have I ever done this? Yes, I have!
Below are just a few examples of what I did:
Nothing special, uncomplicated effects, but decent
And now VFX in the creation of which I already acted as a supervisor
Let's continue with the next batch of UI
From time to time I had to work with motion design. Nothing complicated, it would be a desire
G5 Games period
2016-2019
Over the course of three and half years at G5, I went from 2D artist to Art Director, and in that time I transformed the Art Department, which had only 2D artists doing everything from animations to UI, to industry standards with 3D departments structured by direction, 2D, Animators, UI, etc. Which undoubtedly led to a significant increase in the quality of game graphics.
Well, in the beginning, while I was in the position of Art Lead, I worked on a wonderful project Mahjong Journey
As an Art Lead, I did the same - worked out the style of the project, made UI, 3D, and 2D, wrote guides, created and structured the Art Department, implemented technical solutions, trained juniors, and controlled the entire visual part of the project.
Everything is as usual!
The pipeline for creating objects on the map can be viewed at the following link:
Here are some examples of my work
It looks a little old-fashioned and overloaded today, but in 2016 such UI was still in trend.
From interesting! Due to the lack of suitable tools in the engine for creating complex/animated interfaces, I decided to use Spine 2D as an interface editor. The pipeline works and is great for self-written C++ engines
You can read several of my articles about how I worked with the UI back then
Иван Марьев: Включаем голову и “делаем” интерфейс. Часть I
Иван Марьев: Включаем голову и “делаем” интерфейс. Часть II
A couple more of match-3 sets and we'll continue diving deeper back in time
The period of work at G5 Games was very fruitful and useful for gaining managerial experience and, in general, for understanding how Art departments work and are built in large companies
Pictolabra 1.0
2014-2015
Pictolabra 1.0 was a small indie studio consisting of two people. An artist and a programmer. Our main occupation was the development of a small game for GameHouse
The project is a bit strange both in terms of style and art production.
Made entirely in vector
During this period of time, there were other mini-projects
And one more
Hypercasual is an interesting experience. It was really fun!
Jet Trains for
Realore Studio
2012
Jet Trains is a mobile game from Realore studio that I worked on as Art Lead, 3D Artist, UI Artist, and Animator. The art team was quite small, with around three or four people including me
I apologize for the low quality of the video, but back then we did not have a powerful computer that could do render in high resolution
Let's go back in time, to indie origins!
Indie development
Long, long time ago
2004-2011
The most important thing that I managed to learn during this period of my life is multitasking and multiskill. When you are the only artist on a project, there is no question of what you can and cannot do. Everything must be done!
Of course, some pictures now look very naive
At that time, many different games were made, but something can no longer be found, something else I just don't want to show :)
Well, for dessert, screenshots from the very first project. Just for fun!
Thanks for watching and patience!
Good luck and creative success!
Feel free to contact