Andy Hunt: Art Director, Illustrator & Designer

Art Director: Fortnite Loading Screens

My role at Epic Games is the esoteric sounding title of Senior 2D Artist. What does that actually mean?

In this case, it primarily means that I select, contact, and hire the greatest living artists from the worlds of comic books, concept art, fine art, gig posters, and pop culture. I get to not only meet, but hire and actually work with my art heroes.

From there I write up a clear and concise creative brief detailing what we need them to illustrate – collectible loading screen art that players can earn while playing the various different game modes of Fortnite. I make notes, review everything with our creative directors and executives, and communicate that feedback to the artists.

While many of our loading screens exclusively deal with Fortnite original characters, one of the great joys of this job is that we get to play in everyone else's toy boxes too. I've created and/or art directed illustrations featuring characters from the worlds of Star Wars, Marvel and DC Comics, and just about every anime, video game, tv show, or movie you can think of.

I love my job.

Art Director: Fortnite X Simpsons Loading Screens

This is one of those dream projects.

Fortnite Battle Royale Chapter Six Mini Season Two was themed entirely around The Simpsons. Naturally I reached out to Futurama co-creator, Bongo Comics co-founder, and The Simpsons house artist Bill Morrison to create all of that season's loading screen art. He and his team are a delight to work with and we've partnered on other projects since that season.

Art Director: Fortnite X Metallica Loading Screens

This is ANOTHER one of those dream projects for an art director.

Fortnite Battle Royale Chapter Five Season Three featured a massive crossover event with the gods of heavy metal, Metallica. We needed a pair of loading screens to accompany the event, which were also to be used as album art for an exclusive vinyl release given to Epic Games employees who contributed to making the event happen. I began with a long list of artists who had previous experience making merch and gig posters for the band so that we were starting from a place of familiarity and comfort with the style and subject matter, and eventually narrowed the list down to illustrators Dan Mumford and Luke Preece. I could not have been happier with the results.

Fortnite Battle Royale – 2D Rewards

Before my role at Epic Games shifted to focus almost entirely on loading screen art direction, I personally illustrated many of the 2D rewards players can earn in Fortnite such as sprays and emoticons. Some of the emoticons also required a little bit of animation, which is always a fun skill to bring out from time to time.

Fortnite Battle Royale – UI Iconography

Select Fortnite Battle Royale releases have included a gameplay mechanic called Reality Augmentation that gives players randomly rolled special abilities they can use in game. I have been tasked to design icons for the game's UI that represented each one of those abilities. They were divided into categories that were represented by the shape (circle, triangle, diamond, etc) backing the icon. Over 70 Reality Augments were released in the game to date, and I designed icons for each of those plus more that never saw the light of day.

LEGO Fortnite icons and illustrations

On occasion I get tasked with illustrating art for other parts of the Epic Games ecosystem, including LEGO Fortnite. Here are some examples of spot illustrations I created for use in marketing art, as well as a set of LEGO Ninjago social emoticons.

NecronomiCards

NecronomiCards is a major passion project for me: a horror-themed card game for 2-4 players that I designed, illustrated, and self published via crowdfunding and distribution assistance from the folks at Cards Against Humanity. I have also produced a second volume expansion that increases the player count and adds more gameplay features. Between the two editions of the game I illustrated over 60 highly detailed monster and folklore inspired cards, plus a huge amount of arcane iconography. I designed and tested the gameplay using local and online focus groups and playtested it at gaming conventions and meetups. It has been sold online and at game and hobby stores across the US and Canada.

The Newbridge Tourism Board Presents: "We're Newbridge, We're Comin' To Get Ya!"

Illustrations for an Adult Swim special created by the comedy duo of Tom Scharpling (writer & executive producer of Monk) & Jon Wurster (drummer for The Mountain Goats and Superchunk). Together they have spent the past 20+ years on the podcast (and former radio show) The Best Show. These illustrations depict the history of Newbridge, NJ, a fictional city regularly referenced on The Best Show.

George Washington initially considered Newbridge a possiblity for the capital of the United States. While eating a hotdog in town, the jerk locals covered his saddle in lard and filled his saddlebags with earthworms. He responded appropriately.

Criminal Minds prop book illustration

Here's another extremely fun and unusual project: I created a cover illustration for a prop romance novel featured in Season 10, Episode 6 of the CBS crime drama Criminal Minds, titled "If The Shoe Fits". The book was a featured prop, read by the episode's villain, and later reappeared as an easter egg in Season 11, Episode 13.

Hillflint Apparel marketing illustrations

Product illustrations for Hillflint Apparel's flagship product, the Mark One Sweater. These illustrations were used to market their highly successful Kickstarter campaign, illustrating the properties of the sweater and what makes it stand out above other competitors' products.

userlite Branding Materials

I was hired to serve as lead designer for a 3 person startup called userlite that was aiming to create productivity tools for other beginning startups. These posters are my favorite example of the brand I built in my time there.

Malediction – Album Art

When local death metal outfit Malediction asked me to illustrate the cover of their debut LP Monstrosity, I could not turn them down. An excuse to draw gross monsters? Gimme gimme gimme, I'll never say no to that. Plus it doesn't hurt that it was a genuinely great album.

Valkyrie Brewing Equipment – Branding

Brand identity for an industrial brewing equipment supplier.

Fullsteam Brewing

Fullsteam is a Durham, NC based brewery focusing on making delicious and original beers using locally farmed ingredients. I've had the pleasure of designing t-shirts, merchandise, and marketing materials for them. They have an extremely fun brand, and I loved the opportunity to play in their sandbox.

T Shirt Designs

I've designed t-shirts and other merch for clients such as Marvel, Hasbro, Cracked.com, and Volition Games, as well as pop-culture inspired t-shirts sold at numerous different websites including Threadless, TeeFury, RIPT Apparel, The Yetee, Design By Humans, and others.

Data Visualization

I've worked in several rolls that required a lot of marketing and sales data to be painlessly collected, compiled, communicated in clear visual formats that could be immediately digested by stakeholders or industry professionals.

User Experience Research

I'm not just a visuals guy, I'm also a strategy and research expert. That's not something that looks sexy in a portfolio, but it's every bit as important.

Before a website or app can be visually designed, you have to know exactly who it's for and how you want the audience to experience it. And after you've launched, a smart business will test and test and test and continue iterating on your design. You can always improve things and unless you remain agile and flexible you'll never give your audience the best version of you.

I have extensive experience doing UX research and design studies at award winning agencies and companies as large as Spectrum, Cisco, and Oracle. I really enjoy getting into the heads of users and crafting seamless paths of interaction.

In case you're wondering, the wireframes above became a customer data collection tool for Cisco.