BRINGING ICONIC IPs INTO THE WORLD OF ARK

From Power Rangers to TMNT, MNSTR worked across three DLC releases for ARK, taking on increasingly larger scopes and bringing characters, weapons, animation, VFX and gameplay content all the way into the game.

A collaboration that kept growing

The project brought MNSTR together with LNW, Overwolf, Studio Wildcard and Hasbro to bring iconic entertainment IPs into the world of ARK.

It started with the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Working from the visual direction established for the project, our team took ownership of the creative and technical decisions needed to translate the characters into ARK.

The first release was followed a few months later by Power Rangers Wave 2, and then by an even larger TMNT DLC.
Across the three releases, the scope grew along with the responsibility entrusted to our team.

Starting with the original Power Rangers

For the first DLC, we created the five classic Rangers, along with their weapons and accessories.

One of the first challenges was finding the right anatomy and proportions. Our early studies had a more exaggerated superhero build, which looked strong on its own, but didn’t quite capture the distinctive silhouette and presence of the original Rangers.

That distinction mattered. Working with an established IP isn’t only about reproducing a design accurately. It’s about understanding the visual traits that make those characters feel like themselves, and knowing how far they can be adapted without losing that identity.

We refined the anatomy with more restrained muscle definition and subtle adjustments to height and proportions, including the relationship between the body and the iconic helmets. The result felt much closer to the original characters while still working naturally inside ARK.

Then came ARK itself

ARK allows players to heavily customize their characters, changing proportions such as height, weight and body shape. That meant our models couldn’t simply look right in their default form. They had to preserve the characters’ identity and visual quality across those transformations without stretching, breaking or creating problems downstream.

The same models also needed to support animation and gameplay while working naturally across third-person and close-up first-person views. We planned for those requirements from the beginning, using the approved character models as the basis for the first-person hands rather than treating them as separate assets.

The goal was always the same: make the characters look right, but build them to work as part of the game.

Learning the pipeline while shipping the content

Our responsibility went beyond character art.

For each release, MNSTR handled the complete 3D models, rigging, custom gameplay animations and emotes, VFX, weapons and accessories, as well as implementation in ARK. That meant getting up to speed with ARK’s customized Unreal pipeline while already in production. There was no long runway. We learned how the game expected content to be built, worked through technical issues as they appeared, and integrated the different disciplines into a production workflow that could take assets all the way into the game.

For implementation, we worked directly with the teams involved whenever technical coordination was needed. By the end of the first release, what had started as a new pipeline had become a working process we could build on. That became especially valuable when the scope grew.

A second wave

Following the first release, the scope expanded. Power Rangers Wave 2 added two more Rangers and five villains, together with their weapons and accessories.

Going bigger with TMNT

The third collaboration expanded the scope again.

For the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles DLC, we created both classic and Primal versions of all four Turtles, alongside Shredder, Splinter, April O’Neil, Casey Jones, Foot Soldiers and other characters.

The package also included weapons and accessories, additional props, UI icons and a playable vehicle.

The Primal Turtles were particularly well suited to ARK’s prehistoric world, but their added visual complexity created a new challenge: preserving the personality and richness of the designs while keeping the models optimized for the game.

Customization brought another layer to the work.

The characters needed to support ARK’s customizable color system, requiring us to prepare both the artwork and implementation around the game’s technical specifications. April presented a particularly unusual challenge. Because ARK allows players to choose between male and female characters, we created a male version that needed to feel like a natural adaptation of the original character rather than simply a modified model.

As with the previous DLCs, everything also had to hold up across customization, animation, gameplay and both third-person and close-up first-person views.

From art to game

Across all three DLCs, our work covered the content pipeline from creation through implementation:
3D → Rigging → Gameplay Animation & Emotes → VFX → Unreal Implementation → In-game

Working this way meant that art, animation and technical decisions weren’t isolated from each other. We could make them around how the content ultimately needed to look, move and behave inside the game.

What began with a five-character production scope grew into three releases with increasingly larger and more complex content packages.

Bringing the characters to life

One of the most rewarding parts of the project was seeing characters that have been part of pop culture for decades come to life inside ARK, not just as models, but as characters players could embody, customize and play with.

Across three releases, each new challenge gave us another opportunity to push that experience further and see our work become part of a world players were already having fun in.

Game: ARK: Survival Ascended

IPs: Power Rangers / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Collaboration: LNW / Overwolf / Studio Wildcard / Hasbro

MNSTR: Art Direction, 3D, Rigging, Animation, VFX, Technical Art & Implementation