Back to portfolioDavid Pellet · Creative Art DirectorContact

Case study · AAA Production Art Leadership

Tom Clancy’s
Ghost Recon

Art leadership across Ghost Recon Wildlands Year 2 and Ghost Recon Breakpoint: multidisciplinary team direction, visual consistency, live-production follow-up, cross-studio coordination and the evolution of an established AAA visual language.

StudioUbisoft Bordeaux
Wildlands Year 2Lead Artist · Art Direction Support
BreakpointAssociate Art Director · Lead Artist
Team scaleApprox. 5 artists on Wildlands · up to 20–35 artists / technical artists on Breakpoint
Core proofAAA production leadership across multiple disciplines and timelines

The role

Keep a large production visually coherent while it keeps moving.

Ghost Recon represents a different leadership challenge from Wrath of the Druids. The task was not to invent a completely new territorial identity, but to work inside an established franchise and production pipeline while maintaining quality across live content, new episodes, character work, environments, technical constraints and external dependencies.

My responsibility combined art-direction follow-up with day-to-day team leadership: organizing work, prioritizing, reviewing assets, giving actionable visual feedback, coordinating disciplines, supporting external production and keeping the result aligned with the visual target of the lead project.

Two productions

From a compact support team to a major multidisciplinary group.

The two Ghost Recon productions show the progression of the role and the increase in management scope.

Ghost Recon Wildlands · Year 2

Live-content art follow-up

Lead Artist · Art Direction Support

Working from Ubisoft Bordeaux in support of the lead production, I managed a small multidisciplinary art team and ensured that locally produced content remained aligned with the main game.

  • Approx. five-person art team.
  • 3D character, 3D environment and UI/UX coverage.
  • Art-direction follow-up against lead-studio targets.
  • Asset review, task prioritization and delivery follow-through.
  • Coordination across disciplines and production timelines.
Ghost Recon Breakpoint · Year 1

Scaling the leadership scope

Associate Art Director · Lead Artist

On Breakpoint, the scope expanded substantially. I coordinated a larger multidisciplinary art group, supported the evolution of the main-game art direction and helped define visual identities for Year 1 Episodes 1 and 2.

  • Approx. 20–35 artists and technical artists depending on production phase.
  • Concept, environment, characters, props, textures, VFX and technical art coordination.
  • Asset quality control and visual consistency across multiple content streams.
  • Main-character outfit and accessory customization oversight.
  • External-development integration and cross-studio collaboration.

Leadership system

Art direction translated into everyday production decisions.

The work required a constant bridge between visual ambition and production reality. A successful review needed to tell the artist what mattered, what could remain, what had to change and how much effort the change was worth in the current schedule.

01 · TargetUnderstand the lead-studio visual target and the purpose of the content.
02 · PlanBreak work into clear ownership, priorities and achievable tasks.
03 · ReviewGive visual feedback in context rather than reviewing assets in isolation.
04 · AlignResolve dependencies between disciplines, production and external teams.
05 · DeliverProtect quality while ensuring the work can actually ship.

Multidisciplinary scope

Leading across disciplines—not only inside one craft.

The team structure required decisions to stay connected across disciplines. Character changes affected materials and customization. Environment priorities affected props and technical constraints. VFX and lighting affected readability. Outsourced content needed to arrive inside the same quality bar.

Art disciplines

Concept ArtVisual development, ideation and production support.
Environment ArtLocations, world assets, props and environmental consistency.
Character ArtCharacter assets, outfits, accessories and customization support.
Textures / MaterialsSurface quality and consistency across asset families.
VFXGameplay and environmental effects aligned with readability and tone.
Technical ArtImplementation constraints, integration and production feasibility.

Management responsibilities

PlanningTask prioritization, delegation and production follow-up.
FeedbackDaily reviews, visual corrections and quality control.
PeopleRegular one-to-ones, performance follow-up and support to artists and leads.
Cross-studioAlignment with lead teams and external development partners.
OutsourceIntegration and review of externally produced content.
DeliveryBalancing visual ambition, schedule, dependencies and ship quality.

Franchise & external IP

Protect the game while introducing new content.

Breakpoint Year 1 also required art-direction work around new episodic identities and content developed with external IP stakeholders. This included coordination around licensed content such as Terminator, where the challenge was to make a recognizable external universe function inside Ghost Recon rather than visually detach from the rest of the game.

The value of this experience is not one specific asset. It is the ability to manage visual continuity across a franchise, multiple teams, live content, external partners and changing production priorities.

Public shipped work

Public images support the leadership story—not replace it.

The public visuals below provide production context for Breakpoint. They are team-produced work shown as evidence of the project and quality bar, not as claims of individual asset authorship.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint public production visual
Ghost Recon BreakpointPublic shipped production visual shown as project context. Team work; not presented as individual asset authorship.
Ghost Recon Breakpoint public portfolio visual
Art leadership at AAA scalePublic portfolio visual supporting the Breakpoint production-leadership case study.
Ghost Recon Breakpoint environment production visual
Environment productionPublic Breakpoint team artwork demonstrating the environment quality bar and multidisciplinary production context.
Ghost Recon Breakpoint environment production visual
Visual consistencyPublic team artwork shown to illustrate the scale and visual coherence required across the production.

What this proves

Operational art leadership at AAA scale.

Wrath of the Druids demonstrates ownership of a strong visual identity. THE KIB demonstrates original IP creation. Ghost Recon adds the operational layer: managing multidisciplinary teams, maintaining quality across live production, supporting external development and turning art direction into a repeatable daily production process.