SQUAD - Marketing Stills

While working as a technical artist on Squad, I identified a lack of updated marketing material for our newer maps and factions. To help remedy this, I went and created these marketing stills in my spare time, mostly for the fun of it but also to help generate some new promo materials.
After I had created a few and shown them off, they were well received internally and I was tasked with creating a few more, as well as a full set for our new faction, the Middle Eastern Alliance.

The process of creating these shots was a ton of fun, as I mismashed lots of different assets, animations, effects, and locations from the game. I manually posed all the characters in the shots, added or moved some objects to help with the composition, hand-placed and froze the particle effects in time, and did a full lighting pass for each shot, including the global lighting as well as hand placed fill lights to bring out the character models and action areas. There was no editing of these shots in post, all of what is shown was done in-engine with UE4's post processing and lighting.

This shot was intended to be an eye-catcher, with bright colors and a central light for grabbing attention in promo material. It also shows a key location in the new Fallujah map, the remains of an ambushed convoy at a large crossroads.

Once again, the focus in this shot was to have a strong central element to grab attention, then to let the eye wander to the vehicles in the background, then to the hidden IED in the foreground.

This shot shows off a key location of the new Fallujah map, as well as a new rocket artillery asset in use.

This was one of the earliest shots of the bunch, created to give a first look at the MEA and Fallujah level.

Showing off the new "Hell Cannon" asset for the Insurgent faction.

Shot meant to show off the rally point and HAB (spawning bunker) assets, as well as the Russian faction.

This was intended to be a banner image for the MEA, showing their unique transport vehicle, the 'Simir'.

Showing the MEA soldier models in more detail, as well as the sandstorm lighting scenario for Fallujah.

Emphasizing the visceral close quarters combat players would find themselves in while clearing the streets and alleys of Fallujah.

Shot meant to show the new MEA HAT (Heavy Anti Tank) kit, as well as Fallujah's claustrophobic enclosed market area.

Showing off the skyline of the Fallujah map, as well as the US Army soldier assets.