Lanun was an exercise in pushing Flash to it’s absolute limits. The game is presented in a top-down, isometric viewpoint to give the illusion of 3-D. Character models created and animated in Maya were exported as animated sprites, for maximum realism. The goal was to re-use artwork and other materials from a previous version of the game created using the Half-Life 2 engine and adapt them to an art-focused, hack-and-slash CD-ROM endeavor.

In creating the online identity for the game, I attempted to reach to the audience (comprised largely of traditional gamers) by pushing the gorgeous 3-D art and concept art by Joe Thiel to the forefront. The rich detail of the layout attempts to pull the viewer into the world out of sheer curiosity.

Because the game changed its name following the transition to Flash, I was given the task to create a new logotype. Inspired by in-game fonts such as Delitsch Antiqua, I created the individual characters of the typeface from scratch by hand, cleaning them up in Adobe Illustrator. The logo was then adapted to any element of the presentation by the same artists responsible for the concept work and user interface. The typeface started with this logo is currently being developed as a full-featured font.

For the game itself, I wrote an Actionscript particle effect function for visual touches such as blood splattering or other liquid splashing effects. The function requires no pre-existing imagery, creating itself entirely from the Flash drawing API. It can be tweaked effortlessly through the function call, allowing variations in position, size, direction, color, animation and spontaneity.