Jessica Ebner
© Jessica Ebner

As both Principal Artist and Art Director on 8-Ball Champions, I led the visual direction in a fast-paced startup environment, shaping the look of characters, environments, UI, and marketing with both in-house and outsource teams. I also contributed hands-on with concept art, in-game assets, and Unity implementation to maintain visual quality and support the final player experience, with art direction tailored to a primarily male competitive audience.



These are examples of artwork I oversaw and directed throughout the game’s development, as well as art I personally created.


Splash Page


Made in stages under my direction, this splash page was a team collaboration. I created the initial composition sketches, one of the 3D artists handled the character posing and from there the final image was created. The aim was to design a visually striking page that resonates with a predominantly male audience for marketing.


Stage 1: Sketched comps that I created.

Stage 2: 3D comp with character poses, done by 3D artist.

Stage 3: Final marketing splash image.

Characters & Customization


I created the original character concepts and guided their transition into final 3D, collaborating closely with the 3D team to achieve a clear, stylized look optimized for small screens, strong silhouettes, and color readability. Characters were designed to reflect specific countries on the Champions Tour as regions unlock. Customization was built around efficient reskin systems and premium variants, supporting player expression, performance constraints, monetization, and long-term live ops.

An example of my touch-up feedback, calling out targeted adjustments to align the model with the desired style and refine the character’s overall look.


On the characters featured below: Left: My original character concept. Right: The in-game 3D model, refined over multiple iterations with my notes and direction. The final model was created by one of the team’s 3D artists.

Outfit and character concepts, created by me, for player customization. One neutral outfit was designed for easy re-texturing to save resources, and one high-value outfit with new geometry was created for strong visual impact and player motivation. I also designed this character.

Outfits and character concepts, created by me.

Outfits and character concepts, created by me.

Currency Packs


I created the final artwork for the currency icons, as well as all of the six-tier currency bundle packs. Focusing on clear visual progression to represent growing value and reward. We chose to have gems, coins, and special tokens.


Items


I designed the concept art for these items and established a tiered visual system in collaboration with game design. Together, we defined clear guidelines for pool cues, gloves, and chalk, which I maintained in a shared live document for ongoing production use.


I created these food item icons. The function was to feed the character for power-ups, but that idea was scrapped.

I designed these emojis to be unique and tailored specifically for this game.

Environments


As Art Director, I established the visual direction and designed the featured arenas below, ensuring every country-themed environment felt instantly recognizable while supporting gameplay clarity. Pool table designs were designed to match their arenas, reinforcing regional identity through materials and color.


Concept Art: This concept page was created by me to guide the 3D team with clear visuals and organized texture layouts created to help ensure accuracy and efficiency during environment production.

Final 3D product in game created by 3D artist.

Pool table concept and final texture art I created. The top texture tiles four times to reduce file size, with each table and environment themed after a different city and country.

Mini-Games


As Art Director, I worked with the Creative Director to shape the mini-games as high-energy experiences inspired by 1980s arcades and casino classics, giving players fun alternative ways to earn rewards while driving additional revenue.


I designed and rendered the interface for a roulette-style mini-game, focusing on clarity, appeal, and player engagement. In collaboration with Tech Art, the design was translated into a 3D, animated, and fully functional in-game system.

Logos I created and rendered specifically for the mini-game.

Art Direction: Pinball-themed board created for an in-game mini game created by concept artist on the team under my direction.

Art Direction: Pinball-themed board created for an in-game mini game created by concept artist on the team with my direction.

App- Store Marketing Images


As Art Director, I oversaw the development of in-app marketing imagery used to promote core features, events, and updates. The goal was to quickly and clearly communicate value, excitement, and differentiation within the live game experience.



Town


This was our first pass at the game’s design, featuring a town-building system connected to player achievements and progression, loosely inspired by Empires & Puzzles. Players upgraded their town one building at a time, with build choices affecting other parts of gameplay. Although this concept was later cut as the game evolved, it played an important role in exploring progression and long-term player engagement.

Concept Sketch for Town: I created the initial sketch to illustrate the idea for the town. This spearheaded the overall design and intention.


Concept Art for Town: I created this concept art image for the town. The goal was to design an entire town, complete with buildings and their upgrade variations. A key challenge was creating an isometric map that could accommodate each structure at every stage of its upgrade, ensuring that nothing overlapped or obstructed other elements. I created the initial sketch and the concept art image.


Town in 3D: This is the 3D version of the town. It’s nearing completion, with some remaining set dressing and paint-over work to be added. This was created by a 3D artist on the team.

Town building concept art: The buildings in the town each have 6 different states that progress as you achieve higher level. I created the concepts for these buildings.

Sample of a completed 3D building used to define the intended scale, material quality, and detail level for the rest of the map moving forward. This was created by one of the talented 3D artists on the team.

Kick off work and 3D texture assistance. When we first started building the town, I did some initial modeling and texturing in Maya to help establish the environment’s style. This experimentation helped visualize how the direction might come together and gave the team a clearer sense of the look I was proposing.

These are some ground cards I created for the environment to help break up noticeable texture repetition. By placing them throughout the ground plane, we were able to add variation while staying conservative with texture usage.