EVEGOPLAYON Closes the Gap Between Hard-Surface and Character Art

EVEGOPLAYON has closed the gap between its hard-surface art specialty and character and environment design, reaching an even split between the three within two years. The Tashkent, Uzbekistan-based outsourcing studio serves more than 20 regular clients across the US, Europe and Asia, most of them long-standing game studios and developers. Some of those relationships have developed quite recently, built at industry conferences around the world and reinforced through steady contact between projects.

Some game studios are used to diversifying art-development between many vendors: one for hard-surface work and another for characters, splitting the risk across many shops. EVEGOPLAYON’s almost 70-person team, built mostly through referrals rather than open hiring over five years, now handles three disciplines in roughly equal measure. That consolidation is what convinces clients to hand a single project’s full scope, at a higher price point, to one studio instead of two.

One Meeting at a Time

The timing traces to a shift in strategy that began in 2024, when EVEGOPLAYON committed to attending international conferences on a permanent basis. Its first stop was GDS in the Philippines, a local edition of Canada’s XDS conference, followed by Korea’s GSTAR and other regional events across Asia. Those in-person connections—which are becoming increasingly rare in the gaming industry, where remote work has become the norm for the majority of the workforce in the era of globalization following the pandemic—coincided with existing and new clients increasingly commissioning the company to work on characters and other projects.

We’ve become more confident in our capabilities for producing game environments, but especially characters. In the hard-surface, we already felt ourselves very confident and highly proficient; however, our capacity in that area isn’t unlimited either — so we decided to expand into character creation. “We’re looking for character art,” says Valentin Tsaranov, COO of EVEGOPLAYON.

Why IT Ditches Asana

Instead of running its pipeline through third-party platforms such as Asana, EVEGOPLAYON built and now runs its own internal tool for tracking tasks and time. Its CTO built the system and keeps refining it instead of bringing in outside software for client-facing work, which Valentin calls removing a third wheel. The studio constantly uses AI tools to improve this tool. This tool allows their team to handle tasks and time for its own team, and to monitor its artists’ day-to-day output.

Cheap Art Costs More Later

Conferences build the relationship, Valentin says, but keeping that trust comes down not only to skill, proficiency and responsibility, but also to price: EVEGOPLAYON has never tried to sell its art cheaply. That stance traces to the founders’ pipeline experience: studios that chase the lowest bid often get technically weak art that must be re-released many times. The company aims to save customers time and money by offering its expertise and keeping their budget in mind, since the services of skilled professionals can be quite costly.

“A good specialist, a good art, always costs money,” says Valentin. “And really conscious customers understand this.”

About EVEGOPLAYON

EVEGOPLAYON pairs hard-surface, environment and character art production under one roof, a combination most outsourcing studios in the game industry still split across separate vendors. Based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, the studio marks five years in business this August and serves more than 20 clients across the US, Europe and Asia. Learn more about the studio’s work at EVEGOPLAYON. The studio’s relevant portfolio and pitch deck are shown to potential clients upon request.

Learn more about EVEGOPLAYON at evegoplayon.com.