Art Directing new marketing art

I want to post about a game that I was fortunate enough to help just a little bit on. It's a game called King Of Avalon, from FunPlus. My company has been working on this game for a while now, and it launched globally, several months ago. They were struggling a bit with it, as it entered a very crowded MMO Strategy market. I was brought in to help back in August of 2016, to help with some new marketing art for the Apple and Adroid app stores. Also a new loading screen image for the game.

Just to caveat the background a bit. The game, which is called King of Avalon, draws some story and plot elements from King Arthur legend with references to Morgana, Lady of the Lake, Excalibur, etc, but when you played the game, before September, there were very few images or references to King Arthur, Lady of the Lake, or Excalibur in the game. So back when, the game first launched, I think the players were somewhat confused as to what the game is about. Here's a screen grab of what the app store image use to look like.

None of the app store images screamed out "King Arthur", or "Excalibur".

Anyways, slowly, the game started gaining steam, but it became very apparent when I joined, that we needed to work on the story, and reinforce it with the images, that supported the title. So I was fortunate enough, that I got to work with Red Killion, of Boom Beach fame(Supercell), and we hashed out the basic approach for the app store image sequences, which will feature the main characters of the Arthurian legend. I a freelance artist. His name is LuDongJun, on ArtStation. I was really impressed with one piece in his portfolio. He had done an amazing painting of a dark dragon with a knight/rider, that just looked really cool. That was the sort of energy or cool-ness we wanted. So we hired DongJun to work on the app store images.

We worked collaboratively, with sketches first, and then I approved the first round, then had him do tight sketches, then color sketches, then a bit more back and fourth till the color and costumes were just right, then went to final art. Here are the finished pieces after our internal artists added the title below, as well, background 'in game images' and some marketing phrases. DongJun's work is mostly the front action images of the characters. King Arthur, Lady of the Lake, the dragon and knight, and final battle.