Eduardo Guisandes is a graphic designer and director working at We Are Royale (WAR), a design-driven, full-service creative production studio based in Los Angeles and Seattle. The studio will soon open a new headquarters in the heart of the LA Arts District. Guisandes’ official title at the studio is associate creative director, and he is responsible for envisioning the core concept for a project, defining a design language that aligns with it, and then assembling a team to take it through to completion.
What would surprise people the most about what falls under that title?
Probably the sheer variety of technical and artistic disciplines to navigate and orchestrate daily. I operate at the intersection of design, animation, live action and VFX. Music is always an indispensable part of the equation as well.
Valorant
Every project brings a different combination ratio, and I’m always interested in finding the perfect process recipe for each. The variety is what keeps me interested and engaged.
What’s your favorite part of the job?
The beginning, without a doubt. Taking a deep dive into research, exploring references and lore, reading new material and experimenting in a sandbox environment — free from too many production constraints, if only for a sliver of time. Letting myself be surprised by artists with far better and more interesting outcomes than I could have imagined is one of the best feelings I get with this job.
What’s your least favorite?
Candidly, my least favorite part is preparing the unavoidable aspect-ratio deliverables for social media platforms. I want to live in that parallel timeline where people like to rotate their phones 90 degrees for the widescreen experience.
Do you have a most productive time of the day?
The entire workday tends to be productive in directing the teams moving forward through production on the projects we have at hand. Deep thinking and concept development usually happen either early in the morning or later at night, secluded from the noise of daily production.
Valorant
Can you talk about how COVID has affected the way you work?
I joined WAR mid-shutdown. By then, everyone had already transitioned to a fully remote workflow. I actually didn’t get to meet my coworkers in person for months. They were all Futurama-style floating heads until we had a studio BBQ and a follow-up Taco Tuesday.
Before moving to the US from Venezuela, I worked remotely as a freelancer and small boutique studio owner with international clients for many years. Based on these experiences, a remote workflow feels quite normal to me.
Do you see some of these workflow changes remaining with us going forward?
I think the industry changed forever for the better, and a hybrid workflow moving forward — with a mix of on-site and remote artists — seems inevitable. Some parallels can be found in education, for instance. The creative sector might be one of the last meritocracies: Almost no one factors in your formal education when considering you for a design or animation position; it’s all about your portfolio, skill set and personality/work ethic.
League of Legends
Similarly, I believe location will be less of a determining factor for artists. By now, most studios and individuals have perfected a remote workflow. Many highly regarded, indispensable artists have moved outside the traditional hubs (LA, NY), and there’s no shortage of work for them.
Work setup, at least in this industry, shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all situation. Internet speeds and software solutions are there, and it will come down to the personal styles of studio owners, directors and artists to find a permutation of a setup that suits them on a personal level.
I’m all for building dream teams who are carefully picked for a project’s needs, and doing so without geographic boundaries is liberating. Wrangling multiple time zones can be challenging, of course, but the benefits outweigh the cons so far.
If you didn’t have this job, what would you be doing instead?
I considered both computer engineering and marine biology at some point.
League of Legends
Why did you choose this profession?
One of the earliest memories of seeing something and immediately feeling attracted to a form of design has to be the weird and experimental animated bumpers from the early ‘90s Cartoon Network and MTV.
I was born in Venezuela, and it’s not uncommon to hear from people who grew up in a small town or third-world country that traditional career paths like medicine, law, engineering or commerce seem like the only feasible options. I fondly remember being around 9 years old and coming across a very cool, very strange Canadian TV series called Splat! that used to showcase a lot of experimental animation, stop-motion, cel, behind-the-scenes and cutting-edge techniques. The show made a deep impression on me. I remember it made me ponder, probably for the first time, that art and animation might be real jobs in a faraway place.
Early on, I dreamed of enrolling in a pure animation/narrative-focused school like Gobelins in France, but unfortunately (or luckily, who knows), that wasn’t a possibility back then. I enrolled in the closest thing I could find in my city, which happened to be traditional graphic design, which I later fell in love with. Then, through motion design, I sort of found my way toward animation.
Valorant
Can you name some recent projects you have worked on?
Since joining WAR, most of my time has been focused on video game marketing projects, such as character and map reveals for Valorant and promotional spots for League of Legends, plus tons of other secret projects I can’t talk about yet.
What is the project that you are most proud of?
The last project I completed at WAR was a new map reveal for Valorant set in a parallel-universe Lisbon, Portugal, which happens to be enclosed in a glass dome under the sea. This piece is presented as a faux-touristic ad, in which we travel the city corridors and beautiful animated concept art.
Valorant
We worked very closely with the team over at Riot Games to ensure cultural authenticity while teasing new and exciting nuggets of lore from the game’s next chapter. Witnessing the fan base’s reaction to the level reveal was incredible, especially the Portuguese players’ surprise as their favorite game’s lore intertwined with their country and culture.
I’ve had the opportunity to work on the League of Legends national championships, creating pieces that mix cinematic narratives with hype elements from traditional sports packages. The culmination of that effort is a somber, slow-paced teaser that explores dystopian landmarks — the aftermath of many battles within the lore of League of Legends — right before the world regenerates to get ready for one last clash.
I also enjoyed leading the reveal trailer for Agent Yoru, a stealthy Japanese assassin within the world of Valorant. It has interdimensional jumping; neon kanji characters; a moody, mysterious setting; and a snappy edit to show off his special skills. What’s not to like?
The Good Lord Bird
Previously, one of my favorite projects was a title sequence created for The Good Lord Bird, a TV adaptation helmed by Ethan Hawke based on the novel by James McBride. Visually, it’s a concatenation of symbols and easter eggs from the story itself that gathers inspiration from Saul Bass’ design, Bill Traylor’s outsider art and Iginio Lardani’s body of work for the spaghetti Western genre.
I’m honored to have won a Primetime Emmy Award for this project, which is surreal and humbling, to say the least.
Name three pieces of technology you can’t live without.
Wacom Intuos Medium. Noise-cancelling headphones. The collaboration platform Notion.
What social media channels do you follow?
Behance, Vimeo, Pinterest and Tumblr are probably the social channels I use the most for inspiration-hunting. I love Reddit, and I’m a professional lurker over there with zero posts to my name. It’s a fantastic place to delve into core and fringe interests.
Do you listen to music while you work?
For focused work, I tend to listen to white noise or nothing at all. I enjoy just hitting the shuffle button for semi-automatic tasks and being surprised. My musical taste is a total kitsch disaster.
What do you do to de-stress from it all?
I try to spend as much time in the ocean and outside as possible. I also enjoy finding new and delicious food with my girlfriend, or reading at home.
Finally, would you have done anything differently along your path?
If I had the chance to do it all over, I would set precise dates in the calendar to recalibrate more often and would work more diligently to align myself with projects that I find meaningful — while taking much better care of my health and relationships along the way.
As a final tidbit, investing in culture (whatever that might mean for you) is as important as learning the tools of the trade or design principles. Besides the obvious, having a broad worldview and cultivating interests outside of work can give you an endless palette to draw from.
