3D Launch Trailer

KPOP Demon Hunters - Battle for the Spotlight

Role: 3D Animator, 2D Compositing, Localizations

Tools Used: Cinema 4D, Redshift, After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop

This project didn't start from scratch. It started from a handoff.

My good friend Jags — a talented animator who landed a full-time role at Blizzard Entertainment — passed this project to me. The foundation was already built: assets originally created for a different IP, with the plan to reskin everything for K-Pop Demon Hunters and treat it almost like a template.

The word "template" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

The Challenge

The original assets weren't a 1:1 match for the new game. Some pieces needed reskinning. Others needed to be rebuilt entirely and re-animated from scratch. The lesson that "this should be quick and easy" never actually is — proved itself early.

On top of that, K-Pop Demon Hunters has its own visual world rooted in the film. Anything pulled directly from the movie carries licensing implications. So the environment couldn't be a copy — it had to be inspired by, not duplicated from, the source material.

I modeled the environment around the aesthetic of the Huntr/X Tower apartment from the film. A couch. A table. A rug. The bones of a space that felt right without crossing any lines.

The detail I'm most proud of: the city skyline outside the windows. I used Midjourney to generate purple punk cityscapes and used them as backplates behind the glass — giving the room atmosphere and depth without a single licensing flag.

Craft & Detail

The game assets — box, bag, cards — all needed to feel like the physical product while holding up under cinematic lighting.

One of my favorite details is the holographic film on the box. A rainbow texture, invisible on its own, revealed only through a luma matte triggered by light reflections. When the light hits, the box shimmers. It's the kind of detail most people won't consciously notice — and will absolutely feel.

After the English version was locked, I rebuilt the camera framing for vertical format. Then came localizations.

Bulgarian. Czech. French. German. Italian. Korean. Romanian. Turkish.

Each version required replacing card textures to match what's actually in the box for that country — closeups can't lie. Nights were spent swapping assets, checking translations, and making sure nothing slipped through. I've worked enough localization projects to know how painful it gets when deliverables are tied to specific codecs and frame rates for streaming platforms. Thankfully, everything here was delivered as MP4 for online ads. Small mercy. Big relief.

What This Project Demonstrates

This project shows I can inherit someone else's foundation and elevate it without losing the thread.

It shows I can build environments that honor a licensed IP without reproducing it — a creative and legal tightrope that requires both taste and restraint.

It shows that localization isn't just a technical checkbox. It's a craft decision on every frame.

And it shows that the work I'm most proud of isn't always the loudest. Sometimes it's a holographic shimmer on a box that only appears when the light hits it just right.

My kids recognized the IP the moment they saw it.

That felt pretty good.

Contact.