PINNACLE

Esports Illustrations & Creatives

One of my most impactful achievements at Pinnacle was the creation and implementation of custom esports characters and creatives for Counter-Strike, League of Legends, Dota 2 and Valorant.

Traditional sports graphics can be designed with generic sports imagery and graphics, readily available via a licence from stock websites. The nature of esports, however, makes designing game-specific content considerably more difficult or otherwise expensive. As a result, many sportsbooks resorted to using or copying character art directly from the game publishers to use in their own content, which is an act of copyright infringement.

My challenge was to create a set of bespoke esports characters and graphics that are easily recognisable to their respective fanbase, but designed in such a fashion as to satisfy legal constraints - striking the fine balance between originality and familiarity.

PROCESS

The illustrations were part of a larger refresh of the entire Pinnacle Esports creative that multiple departments collaborated on. In my design process, I took inspiration from the team's best ideas and decided to combine the use of silhouettes and shape outlines with my own, more illustrative style. The result was a mostly black, low-key lighting approach that allowed me to capture the essence of the characters while maintaining a sense of mystery - and satisfying legal constraints!

To elevate the minimalist designs, I played around with textured brushes to create an abstract, painterly style that added depth and flair to the illustrations. Each character was assigned a unique colour palette based on their most recognisable skins or associations, further enhancing their distinct characteristics.

Upon presenting the final designs, they received overwhelmingly positive feedback across the board, including the all-important green light from legal. This meant I could expand the character roster, and the whole team could steadily start integrating these custom illustrations into various marketing materials and content.

PINNACLE

Esports Illustrations & Creatives

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DESIGNER: Inny Goossens

EMPLOYER: Pinnacle

MANAGER: Nick Jevons

SOFTWARE & TOOLS:

DISCOVER: ESPORTS Visual Identity