What could a fighting game become if the people shaping contemporary culture helped shape the world itself?
Personal history, music, performance and cultural research inform characters with their own identities, fighting styles and stories. The work moves from a person to a silhouette, from a silhouette to behavior, and from behavior to a place within the world.
The selection brings those disciplines into view together. A pendant, a garment, a street and an interface can carry different parts of the same idea.
Nothing Projects’ role
One creative direction. An entire world of work.
Original IP & strategy
Creative direction & identity
Character & world development
Game & interface design
Motion & audiovisual direction
Developed by Nothing Projects Interactive in partnership with Republic Records.
Metro Boomin Executive Producer Season 01 Cover Artist
02 / The cast16 selected artist studies
Identity has a silhouette.
Recognition begins with the body: proportion, posture, garment weight and the space around a figure. Personal symbols make that outline specific.
The cast is developed as a collection of distinct presences. A quiet white tank, an inflated blue shell and an elaborate ceremonial look belong to the same world while carrying different histories and intentions.
Selected model studies and look visualizations. Open any work to explore its context and related development.
16 worksScroll to explore →
Metro Boomin
01
NO CAPE INDEX
Character model study
Sauce Walka
02
CODE RED
Character model study
Kodak Black
03
SIGNAL ORANGE
Character model study
NLE Choppa
04
ASCENSION
Character model study
Nardo Wick
05
LUCID WICK
Character model study
That Mexican OT
06
RODEO
Character model study
Tay-K
07
HAPTIC TAY
Character model study
Antonio Brown
08
CRASHOUT PROTOCOL
Character model study
1900 Rugrat
09
ONE TAKE
Character model study
Denzel Curry
10
ZATOICHI FORM
Character model study
Ski Mask the Slump God
11
DARK YUGI
Character model study
Ian
12
WHITESPACE
Character model study
Boosie Badazz
13
COOGI WITNESS
Character model study
Key Glock
14
RUSSIAN CREAM
Character model study
Lazerdim700
15
SPEED OF DARK
Character model study
Audrey Nuna
16
GENRE FLUID
Look visualization
The design criterion: recognizable in one second, at ten percent scale.
03 / The makingSource / Interpretation / Construction
The evidence behind the image.
An artist’s personal object becomes a specification. A material reference becomes a drawn volume. A character’s outline has to hold up in motion.
Follow three movements through the making: sources translated into form, a body given presence, and an identity explored through changing selves.
I / TranslationMaterials / Objects / Form
Four translations / Material & form
Before a silhouette, a specific source.
The common drawing language leaves room for very different people. A knit becomes structure. Fur changes an outline. Jewelry gives the body another anatomy. Ordinary clothes establish a quiet presence. Each connection begins with a specific source.
Boosie Badazz01 / Source → Form
Boosie Badazz
Patterned knitwear
Artist photograph reference
Boosie Badazz
COOGI WITNESS
Character model study
Pattern becomes structure.
The artist’s patterned knitwear carries color and texture into the protective form of a vest. The full atlas follows that translation through its garment studies.
Key Glock02 / Source → Form
Key Glock
Fur as volume
Garment reference
Key Glock
RUSSIAN CREAM
Character model study
Volume makes the silhouette.
White fur expands the edge around the head. Its scale establishes a recognizable outline before the details resolve.
Lazerdim70003 / Source → Form
Lazerdim700
A skeleton outside the body
Jewelry reference
Lazerdim700
SPEED OF DARK
Character model study
Jewelry becomes anatomy.
The reference places a metallic skeleton outside the body. The rib structure becomes a defining part of the character’s image.
Ian04 / Source → Form
Ian
Straight profile
Garment reference photograph
Ian
WHITESPACE
Character model study
Drape carries the identity.
Straight dark trousers establish the baseline. The character adds weight, wrinkles and volume while keeping the quiet profile of a white tee and black trouser line.
References and authored development retain their own labels. Open a pair to look closely at the translation.
Clear and opaque. Flesh and structure. The material reference, authored drawing and look visualization let the same tension be followed across three kinds of evidence.
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Audrey Nuna
01
Softness, exposed
Material reference
Audrey Nuna
02
Soft-synthetic / The authored concept
Authored concept drawing
Audrey Nuna
03
GENRE FLUID
Look visualization
The wider exploration
Raw, punk-street and hard-tech proposals extend the same question into other silhouettes.
The 102 pendant grounds the work in a personal vocabulary. The authored jewelry plate turns that source into a repeatable design language; the character gives it a place on the body.
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Sauce Walka
01
The 102 pendant
Jewelry reference
Sauce Walka
02
A personal vocabulary, specified
Authored jewelry specification
Sauce Walka
03
CODE RED
Character model study
3 worksScroll to explore →
Sauce Walka
01
Red Dead Walka
Earlier concept direction
Sauce Walka
02
Zaraki
Alternate concept direction
Sauce Walka
03
Purple Pope
Alternate concept direction
II / PresenceConstruction / Model / Film
Metro Boomin / One governing identity
From structure to presence.
The bandana, glasses, pendant, weighted trouser line and asymmetrical hands stay legible across construction, model and motion studies. Control and restraint are carried by the whole figure.
Metro Boomin
The internal construction
Annotated construction study
Metro Boomin
Weight, viewed in space
Model visualization
Metro Boomin
Personality between attacks
Body-language visualization
The same direction, in time
Light. Weight. Voice. Silence.
The reveal film brings the character’s presence into rhythm. The silhouette registers, the light locates the body, and the portrait pendant keeps the private source in view.
NO CAPE INDEX / Character filmPremiered at NYCC
III / TransformationTime / Public image / Another self
Tay-K / The Infinite Reflection
The image runs. The person waits.
The public image, the waiting body and the imagined self move through time differently. Three forms give that fracture an outline, an object and a relationship to movement. The fiction mirrors the making of an avatar from confinement, while leaving reinvention unresolved.
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Tay-K
01
Racer / Running
Character form study
Tay-K
02
Berserker / Waiting
Character form study
Tay-K
03
HAPTIC TAY
Character model study
Tay-K
The Infinite Reflection
Cinematic concept
Kodak Black / Four public readings
Icon. Meme. Monster. Myth.
Each public reading captures something recognizable and leaves something outside the frame. Color, clothing volume, equipment and outline change the story being told. These concept-to-model comparisons make those decisions visible.
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Kodak Black
01
Icon / Kodak Orange
Concept → model comparison
Kodak Black
02
Meme / Kodak Match
Concept → model comparison
Kodak Black
03
Monster / Yaka Legba
Concept → model comparison
Kodak Black
04
Myth / American Sniper Gang
Concept → model comparison
Character and narrative proposals document development. Kodak Match’s tracking-loss idea belongs to the cinematic study; in-match mechanics remain proposed.
A character’s identity has to survive changes in material, scale, movement and context. The next chapter gives that body a place to belong.
Old brick, repaired concrete, overhead wires and everyday commerce remain present inside a city shaped by new systems of attention and control.
Its identity lives at different scales: the skyline above a body, the room around an encounter, the sign outside somewhere familiar. Follow those decisions from the street into the places people occupy.
The planning drawings bring Main Street and the Chicken Spot into one street sector. The garage, cathedral, club and shared hubs establish other centers of activity. Routes and thresholds become part of the world’s design.
Storefronts, faith, advertising and utility share a compressed frontage. Weathering and repair give the neighborhood a history; distant towers place another scale of power above it.
The city
Main Street
Environment development
The city
Old city, new control
Architecture concept study
The spatial decision
The painterly architecture study gathers low roofs, narrow gaps and improvised additions beneath taller structures. In the developed street, the same contrast becomes a view from the ground.
A sign asks a person to breathe. A screen returns a fight as a public image. Fixtures, messages and repeated figures make attention part of the place. Follow the original concepts and annotations to discover what the world is offering—and what it asks in return.
The long fascia, central entrance and street railing hold the place together as the design develops. A drawn crown gives way to an LED sign. Menus, yellow seats and a resting figure carry the storefront into everyday life.
Collected interior reference
The Chicken Spot
Counter, seating, menu wall
Shop interior photograph reference
Authored environment concept
The city
The Chicken Spot / The starting image
Environment concept
Developed environment
The city
The Chicken Spot
Environment development
A closer reading
A place, in its details.
Detail from The Chicken Spot
01 / 03
A public face in a single line.
The continuous red lettering makes the shop legible from across the street. Its glow carries the name beyond the fascia and onto the pavement.
A location, in depth
Follow the food-counter references, facade studies and developed views in the complete place study.
A small canopy and vertical sign promise something beyond the closed facade. Inside, a blue oculus, a suspended mechanism and projected performers turn light and reflection into the architecture of spectacle.
The city
Nightlife / The interior
Environment development
The city
Nightlife / The exterior
Environment development
The city
Nightlife / The threshold
Environment detail
The working facade
Vents, power boxes, cables, notices and a camera remain visible at the entrance. The spectacle belongs to a building with ordinary working parts.
Different spaces place different demands on a body.
A room changes a person’s scale.
The cathedral holds a long view through stained light, damaged stone and scaffolding. Its cinematic counterpart concentrates sacred scale around a seated figure. The setting carries part of the character’s presence.
Inside a design decision / The Cathedral
Keep the order. Give it resistance.
A Gothic elevation brings a strong central axis. The brief asks how fracture and construction can disturb that order while keeping the whole composition legible.
01Test the vertical balance.
The Cathedral
A symmetrical elevation
Architectural composition drawing
The paired elevations already test a change: one tower rises, shifting the weight of the outline while the central arch remains.
02Compose the interruption.
The Cathedral
Breaking the building’s symmetry
Architectural composition drawing
The broken peak, cranes and scaffolding carry opposing angles across the building. The additions become part of its gesture.
The constraint
Keep a form to read.
The central axis, arch and towers establish an order that the interruptions can work against.
The intervention
Give each break a direction.
The brief aligns fracture and construction with opposing tension angles, limiting the composition to one to three major interventions.
The consequence
Let repair shape the silhouette.
Construction and decay acquire visual weight. Their placement lets a rigid building carry tension, movement and a history of adaptation.
A related spatial reading / Developed interior
The city
The cathedral
Environment development
Architecture / The cinematic frame
The room finds a human center.
The interior keeps the long axis, arches and stained light legible among scaffolding and damaged stone. The separate film composition brings that scale to a seated figure.
The city
Belief, held in a frame
Cinematic frame
The parking garage
Weight overhead. Light in pockets.
Concrete columns, low ceilings and abandoned cars break the view into separate fields. A utilitarian room becomes dense with obstruction, shadow and concentrated signals.
Neighborhood signs, water towers, palms, drainage water and painted skies broaden the world’s geography. Ordinary infrastructure remains the anchor as the density falls away.
2 worksScroll to explore →
The city
01
Parkway Village
Cinematic frame
The city
02
The road at twilight
Cinematic frame
VI / Life between fights
A world is also the time spent in it.
Someone has been here.
Waiting, watching and moving through the neighborhood give the world a human scale. A precise street name, a lit doorway or the distance between two figures can locate a person as clearly as a costume.
Nardo Wick
LUCID WICK
Character model study
2 worksScroll to explore →
The city
02
A street becomes a signal
Cinematic frame
The city
03
The light left on
Cinematic frame
Nardo’s teaser storefront and the world’s Justina sign are separate images, read together through their precise use of darkness, light and place.
The cast
A shared world
Character & world composition
The world continues inside the screen, its audience and the space of reflection.
A fight becomes a record, an image and another choice.
The interface gives those changes a form. A person is selected, a place is chosen, an opponent becomes ready. After the encounter, the player is addressed as a winner, a subject of review and someone who can return.
The design problem is to make each action clear while letting the world’s institutions, voices and values remain present.
Media Grid
Every system has a presence
Interface composition study
Selected identity and interface development, 2025–26. Original compositions, prototype captures and written interaction specifications retain their different roles as evidence.
I / Choice & preparation
Carry a choice into the world.
Selection is the first act of participation. These studies keep a character, a location and another person in view as the encounter takes shape.
Each screen has a different responsibility. Together, they prepare the fight without letting the player’s choices disappear between menus.
Character selection / CORE LOOP UI & UX, 2026
The composition
Recognition becomes a choice.
A portrait establishes the person. Beside it, a posed, full-body figure presents the character. The two images let recognition and a possible fighting identity occupy the same screen.
The design responsibility
The selection brief asks for a clear style read, a name, a stance and a lock-in. The character has to become a choice someone wants to make.
Arena selection / CORE LOOP UI & UX, 2026
The composition
An arena has an address.
The map expands Main Street into a place card: images, local description and a next action. The city remains present while the player chooses where to fight.
The design responsibility
The mobile review asks for a larger, more usable information panel. The richness of the world still has to work at the scale of a phone.
Cyan and red bodies face one another across the FIGHTLINE identity. The chosen location sits between them. Preparation becomes a staged image of an impending fight.
The design responsibility
The ready-screen brief asks it to hold the selected fighter, selected arena and opponent’s status. The composition has a practical responsibility: make the encounter clear before it begins.
Interface design studies. Names, attributes and values belong to the source compositions; they describe development rather than current feature availability.
II / Outcome & continuation
The fight ends. Its image continues.
The post-match brief treats the ending as a climax, a record and a route onward. The street remains behind the interface while a cyan double, a verdict and a post-fight audit reorganize what just happened.
The contrast matters: combat asks the player to read bodies in motion; this result study proposes a separate moment to read the encounter as information.
Post-match interface
Verdict, record, next action
Interface design study
A closer reading
Four responsibilities in one composition.
Detail from Verdict, record, next action
01 / 04
The system makes a declaration.
The winner is confirmed beside notices that a capture has been saved and an archive updated. In this design study, the fight becomes an official record as well as a personal outcome.
Graphic design / Narrative consequence
A result can become a condition.
The result study gives an outcome a visible form. The narrative framework asks how the way a fight is remembered and broadcast can shape the conditions of the next encounter. Recognition, reflection and the city’s response become part of what a person returns to.
The alternate study gives VERDICT a large central heading. The other composition distributes attention between winner, recorded body and audit. Read together, the studies expose a question of hierarchy: how much of the ending belongs to the declaration, the person and the next action?
Parallel design studies. Their juxtaposition does not establish a final selection or a sequence of implementation.
III / Motion & state
A transition has a responsibility.
The flow specifications make continuity a design requirement. A screen should finish leaving before the next one arrives; the chosen character, arena and encounter must survive the passage.
Waiting also carries social information. Knowing that another person has accepted, is choosing or is ready gives a pause a meaning.
Motion specification / Three phases
01
Exit
Finish the departing screen’s animation.
02
Load
Hold until the destination is ready.
03
Arrival
Bring in the next screen with the same choices intact.
Waiting for another person
Make the pause legible.
Accepted
Choosing character
Character locked
Ready
Reading of the August 2026 match-flow specifications. These are requirements for interaction and motion, rather than a demonstration of completed behavior.
IV / Wordmark studies / Visual identity
Different acts. Different voices.
The player moves between physical encounter, private reflection, self-presentation and public viewing. The identities give those acts different graphic voices. Their differences make the world feel inhabited by several systems, each with its own manner of address.
01Fight
Force / Direction
FIGHTLINE
Stacked, forward-leaning letters sit inside an orange faceted enclosure. The mark gives the encounter a concentrated sense of force before a body moves.
02Reflect
Image / Construction
MIRRORTHREAD
A field of small points resolves into a name. The letter remains readable while its construction stays visible: an image held together from separate parts.
03Customize
Space / Selection
CURATEL
Open, rounded strokes and generous spacing give the name a measured pace. Beside the density of FIGHTLINE, this identity leaves more room around the act of self-presentation.
04Watch
Publication / Screen
WATCHLINE
Serif letterforms acquire stepped, pixel-like edges. The mark brings the character of a printed title into the visual texture of a screen.
Selected identity studies from the development archive. The Media Grid preserves a different CURATEL direction.
V / Private & public
An interface can be a place.
The safehouse explores a private address: a room, personal objects, reflective surfaces and controls at the edge of the view. Broadcast studies give an image a different address—a frame, a room and people watching.
The same design practice moves between a screen someone uses and an image other people encounter.
MIRRORTHREAD
MIRRORTHREAD / Safehouse
Early interface prototype
MIRRORTHREAD / Early safehouse prototype
The room holds the interface.
Glass blocks, a draped sofa, a CRT and labeled access bays make the interface part of an apartment-like interior. EDIT SAFEHOUSE, EXIT and circular edge controls remain visible within that setting.
The dated v0.07 prototype is evidence of a spatial approach. The later system framework distinguishes MIRRORTHREAD’s reflection from CURATEL’s self-presentation and SANC’s combat knowledge.
WATCHLINE / The witness layer
A private action finds a public.
A fight can be encountered by someone who never entered it. The broadcast compositions give that relationship an architectural and social form: an image occupies a frame; people gather around it.
The spectator brief reduces the interaction to finding a fight, opening it, following the action and returning. The larger idea has to remain legible in that simple act of watching.
The institutions
WatchLine / the screen as an object
Cinematic interface detail
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Media Grid
01
An image, being watched
Cinematic frame
The cast
02
The room around the screen
Cinematic frame
These studies follow identity through a choice, an encounter, a record and an audience. In play, the body has to carry that identity through every exchange.
Positioning, timing and momentum shape each exchange. Posture, camera, sound and physical reactions communicate its changing state. The same character and world direction has to remain legible under a player’s control.
App flow / Character selection / The fightDevelopment build · Shown at NYCC
Read the body
Guard. Breath. Recovery.
A committed strike and its recovery give the other player something to read. Framing and sound keep contact and consequence clear.
SANC / Sanctioned Combat Network
Movement is a body of knowledge.
The research includes 52 Blocks, Louisiana Sidestep and Brownsville style. SANC gives that knowledge an institutional place within the world: an archive, conservatory and movement laboratory.
Institutional design / Development study
07 / The project todayAn ongoing body of work
A world in development.
At New York Comic Con on October 8, 2026, the team presented Metro’s character reveal, gameplay and the official trailer. The work spans a playable development build, character and environment archives, films and an evolving family of identities.
OnlyHands remains in development for iOS and Android.
Character models, authored concepts, world imagery, interface studies and films: ONLYHANDS / Nothing Projects Interactive. Research references are identified separately from authored work. This selection draws on the Characters & Development presentation, the supplied frame collection and the existing character studies. Concepts, look visualizations, institutional designs and prototype interfaces describe development; cinematic frames remain distinct from gameplay evidence. Metro Boomin is Executive Producer and Season 01 Cover Artist. The NYCC conversation featured Metro Boomin and Zane Comer, moderated by Carl Jones.
