Toontown in the style of MW2

    I decided to remix Toontown’s battle interface in Photoshop because I’ve always admired the game’s battle system mechanics, along with its ability to present them in an incredibly simple yet effective manner. All of the weapons and interactions are contained within one page (with the exception of the S.O.S. button), which is something that I admire. For a long time I’ve wondered how another game would implement Toontown’s battle system without its iconic cartoony style. The theme that I felt other turn-based strategy games could most easily use to feature a similar weapon progression system was that of shooters. As such, I decided to adopt the style of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, because it is a shooter I am highly familiar with, as well as an extremely popular game that is widely considered to provide the best multiplayer experience in the CoD series.

    Interestingly for this project, Toontown has a much more distinct and recognizable visual style in comparison to Modern Warfare 2. Toontown is known for its use of bright colors, rounded edges, and overall silliness in its presentation. The visual style of Modern Warfare 2 is less obvious. It features dull colors (grayscale in the case of the actual interface), fading borders, and a straight-edge approach that emphasizes clarity in its presentation. To adopt the style of Modern Warfare 2 over that of Toontown is to transition from an approach that values personality to one that emphasizes clarity. Given that many people consider Call of Duty to be the stereotypical first person shooter, stripping away Toontown’s cartoony theme allows one to more clearly analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the organization of the interface itself.

    In my application of this remix, I attempted to stick to the script as closely as possible. As such, I left all of the interactions of the original interface intact, along with adhering to the original layout and hierarchy. The result of this project could essentially be considered a reskin in this sense.