Art Direction at Gather

2020 - 2023

Gather is retro-RPG aesthetic proximity chat platform that runs in-browser. I worked for this company first as an early employee and their first full time artist hire. I was promoted a few times within the company, to senior level artist and team lead, manager of the two teams in the department, and by the last year I was employed there I was heading the department in a leadership role as the Art Director. I loved each position along the way, grew in my own abilities and also significantly shaped the way Gather looked and felt.

In 2020, many creative theatrical productions moved online out due to necessity from the COVID-19 lockdowns. Some creatives made use of Zoom, but others used smaller platorms that allowed for more creative liberties. Gather became a popular choice among colleagues of mine who were previously making live experiences and immersive artwork. I was first introduced to Gather at an “Everything Immersive” industry conference, and began to create work within the platform during the period of time where much of the world was in lockdown. The company took notice, and by the end of 2020, I was hired as their first full time artist.

Four of the original Gather avatars, before avatar style changes I lead A lineup of my coworkers’ avatars, made with the customizer after my overhaul of the avatar system as the Art Director was implemented.

Here’s an example of the kind of spaces Gather offered when I first became introduced to the company.

An example of a map in Gather in the early days My very first Gather space, very 1bit

In the early days, the avatars weren’t user-editable, but the map was totally customizable. I made a few spaces, then did some contract work making maps for folks using the platform for themed event spaces.

Camping themed space I made as a fan, before I started working at Gather

The story of the coffee shop is one that the CEO of Gather and I have shared often with others. In the late part of 2020, I made a virtual coffee shop and posted the link on Twitter.

The coffee shop I created

I kept the space open on my laptop while I was in my room, using it as if I were working from a coffee shop. I heard voices coming from my laptop one evening and looked up to find Phillip Wang, the CEO of Gather, serving virtual visitors coffees from behind the counter, roleplaying as a barista. A writer for WIRED magazine was also in the space, and she later wrote an article about Gather from the visit.

An asset I made three years later is an homage to that early Gather-ing place.

Shortly after that evening, I applied to Gather and began working there full time. I was employee number 20. I started by working with the Art Director Mark Carpenter to develop Gather’s visual style and color pallete. I also worked on a small team of other pixel artists to make thousands of assets for the platform.

Gather’s success in the pandemic opened many potential avenues to explore. We made some experimental games to bring remote friends and families together, including a short RPG about indigenous identity, a grand prix racing game, two escape rooms, a fishing and gardening minigames, and more.

After a couple years at Gather, I was leading the team as the Art Director. While in this role, I overhauled the avatar system, reworked the color palette, and revised systems of virtual space creation. I placed emphasis on more efficient workflows to craft virtual offices and assets with ease, and improved the layout of our spritesheets and texture crafting. I worked closely with the product design leadership to adjust our style based on customer feedback, which my team and I participated in attentively by actively interviewing users and visiting their customized virtual offices. I interfaced with engineering, game server and rendering, product design, executive leadership, customer support, marketing, and localization teams.

One of the largest projects I worked on at Gather was making the selection of avatar styles and assets more inclusive. This included new hair styles, colors, skin tones, and skin types.

Skintone Base Explorations on an avatar base from 2021 Skintone Base Explorations on an avatar base from 2023

Newly added hair styles

A collection of different avatars, showing the range of appearances

My influence on Gather’s style towards a more professional look

The result was a more professional and uniquely Gather style. This was comprised of identity-inclusive avatars and wearable features, objects, and world environments. I reshaped the color palette, set the bar for consistency and quality in the art the team produced, and developed broad goals for the art and map departments as a whole.

I was able to contribute a number of blue sky ideas with other department heads and executive leadership at Gather, and delighted in the opportunity to help pull this start-up to profitibility and reknown.

During a pivotal moment for Gather, as the pandemic restrictions were lessened and live events began to happen again, we pivoted to focus on remote work and discussed at length what changing the style of the avatars would entail. I was asked to explore what it could look like.

Interestingly, after extensive user interviews, the majority of users liked the pixelart styles the most. They appreciated the more “sophisticated” pixel art style, an improved color palette, slightly taller avatars with more colorblocked textures. So in the end, the overhaul of the art style and avatar system I managed in 2022 into 2023 was an evolution, or a “growing up” of our earlier pixel art style, instead of a drastically different style. We threw a lot of ideas against the wall, and some verson of them may reappear in the future of Gather– who knows! I’ll always look back at my time with Gather fondly. I loved my team and believed in our mission to make an accessible two dimensional metaverse product.