Hello, fellow friends, peers, and game art connoisseurs!
As we're readying for the holiday break, it's once again time to reflect on the past and look at what's to come, isn't it? And, of course, there's the traditional final portfolio update of the year.
While there is a lot to talk about on the project side of things, one cannot be oblivious to the current state of affairs. 12 months ago we wrote:
It's been a great year for games, but, clearly, it's not been a great year for a good number of people who work on them. Chances are some of you are reading this. And if you've been in this industry for more than a hot minute and were lucky enough to dodge all this, you most certainly personally know someone who is being affected by lay-offs or just graduated and is struggling to land a job in this environment.
Sadly enough, pretty much all of the above also applied to 2024. Lay-offs and the looming threat of redundancies take a mental toll, and knowing that some people here experienced even more than one round of lay-offs this year and that many talented newcomers have a tough time breaking into the industry is disheartening. There's no sugarcoating this. And thus, we're hoping that 2025 will bring more stabiltity as well as incentives/initiatives for more support structures and sustainability.
Had 2024 been a less volatile year, you probably would be playing Project Dragon (aka Everhaven) right now. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. While that was heartbreaking, we were in the priviliged position to publish the art we had created for it rather than see it vanish into the dreaded IP/NDA vortex that most here are overly familiar with. Shout-out to the people who made this possible, and shout-out to the art team at Phoenix Labs that was an absolutely lovely bunch to work with. If you somehow missed that load of updates, you can dive into the goods right here as well as check out our respective blog posts. The response we and all the other artists got was fantastic, and it would be sweet to see this body of work inspire a few things down the road.
Other bits from the 'ICYMI' department: we got to show some of the 3D env/prop work we got to contribute to Palia (more to come), we posted our equally cozy 3D character & prop work on Fae Farm, and completed our Crash Team Rumble gallery. It was long overdue, but yours truly finally got the ball rolling on our 3D weapon work on Valorant (more to follow in January). Riot Games also let us show a first glimpse at some of the environment concept and 3D work we're doing for 2XKO.
Last, but certainly not least: 2024 marked a decade of us working with the Overwatch team at Blizzard. Mindboggling! We're still quite behind with our Overwatch 2 portfolio backlog, but stay tuned for more 3D character as well as environment concept & 3D drops in early 2025.
We're also looking forward to showing our work on games like Towerborne and Supervive and possibly talk about a project or two that have yet to be announced. Fingers crossed!
As always: a big thanks to this wonderful art community for all the support and feedback in the past year! A big thanks to all the terrific artists we get to work with! And a big thanks to all the splendid studios we got and get to colloraborate with!
(This year's holiday artwork was done by Vivien Siemers!)
See you in 2025!
Your Airborn Studios team