This was one of the most decisive projects I’ve done in a long time. The brief demanded a balance between playful, painterly visuals and the rigid technical constraints of a platform that wasn’t designed for bespoke CGI. The asset design therefore had to be precise: every brushstroke, highlight and shadow needed to read clearly on small, vertical screens while remaining faithful to the creative direction.

Adding depth to the food elements was a priority, so we incorporated live CG components to give volume and believable lighting. Integrating those live elements inside TikTok’s bespoke environment proved more difficult than anticipated. The platform enforces strict limits on file size, draw calls and shader complexity, and it lacks the advanced shader systems and texture pipeline available in standard game engines. As a result, traditional approaches — heavy geometry, layered UV maps and multiple texture sets — were impractical.

To solve this, the team moved beyond off-the-shelf techniques. We collaborated closely with our coder to prototype lightweight solutions: simplified geometry paired with stylised normal and AO passes, baked lighting where possible. The breakthrough came when we developed custom shaders specifically tailored to the platform’s runtime. These shaders mimicked painterly brushwork and surface variation while avoiding the memory and performance costs of detailed UV-mapped textures.