Roberta Tam - Art & Design

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  • illustrations
  • sketches & fun
  • game development
  • resume/cv
  • shop
Roberta Tam - Art & Design

Big Hero 6: Battle in the Bay (Nintendo DS/3DS)

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I got the exciting opportunity create art for Big Hero 6: Battle in the Bay (Nintendo DS and 3DS).  I did extensive work with the UI and UX of the game, creating the look and style for the blue, retro interface.  I also created concept art for enemies and bosses in the game that were later modeled and animated in 3D.


Creating a Retro UI

My biggest role on this game was designing the UI and UX for the game.  I worked closely with another designer, and together we used Balsamiq to prototype the game flow and screens.  From there, I began working on designing the UI, which proved to be a bit challenging at first since at the time we didn't know much about the film yet.  All we had was an early teaser trailer, but there was a gem in there that sparked my inspiration for the UI.

In the trailer, Hiro uses a computer program to design Baymax's armor, and the look and feel of that program is so full of character (grids, glowing buttons, wireframe icons (major Tron vibes!).  Even with the few screenshots I had, it became the main reference for what eventually became the UI style for the 3DS game.

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References from Big Hero 6 trailer
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Screenshots of finalized game UI
The final UI style I created was a combination of grids, blueprint iconography and glowing buttons.  It was a cyber/hightech look to match the tech of the heroes' armor.

Character Design for NanoBots

You might have noticed that the nano bots in the game are very different than the ones that were in the film.  That's because since we were creating the game at the same time as the film, we actually knew very little about the bots!  We had only one reference for creating the bots and did what we could to match it.

When we were designing our bots, we had the impression that that Fujibot (our reference robot) was the size of a 6-story building.  Little did we know that it would actually be the 6" robot toy that appears at the start of the film.
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Reference art for the fearsome Fujibot
I worked closely with a talented group of artists to draw and create the enemy robots below.  The designers would come to us with the type of bot they needed such as "Ground Melee Brute",  and then we'd come up with sketches, iterate, refine, iterate and finally have a finalized concept to be taken to 3D production.
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Concept art for the nanobots
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The first boss encounter - a sabertooth robot with three deathly tails.
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The final boss - a dragon robot whose body is made up of indivudal, magnetized, hovering segments

Take a look at our final gameplay trailer!

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