Before a player scores their first basket, they build themselves. The 2K20 character creator was the first real expression of player identity in MyCareer — and it had to feel like a stage, not a spreadsheet.
01 — MyPlayer Character Creator — Build System
The builder was redesigned to present character attributes as a visual build rather than a numerical form. Sliders gave way to a real-time 3D preview where every change — body type, face structure, position archetype — rendered immediately on the athlete model. The motion language used in the transitions was intentionally slow and reverent, giving weight to each decision. You weren't filling out a form. You were sculpting a player.
The UI stack was layered to minimize cognitive load during the heaviest decision-making: a persistent player card tracked cumulative build choices at a glance, while category panels collapsed cleanly when not in focus. The result was a creation flow that felt closer to customising a car than navigating a settings menu.
02 — 'Next' Transitional HUD — In-Game Menu
The 'Next' menu was a persistent in-game overlay — a context-sensitive shortcut layer that surfaced the most relevant action at any given moment in MyCareer. The design challenge was density: how do you give a player meaningful next steps without pulling them out of the game's world?
The answer was motion hierarchy. The primary action dominated, secondary options receded into the peripheral frame, and the entrance animation was tuned to register as a notification rather than an interruption. In practice, it reads in under a second. The visual language draws from the same cold, metropolitan palette as the 2K20 arena HUD — monochromatic with a single orange accent point driving attention.
03 — Main Menu Arena
04 — MyTeam Mode UI
The arena UI system for 2K20 used a dual-navigation approach that was new to the franchise — a persistent top-level nav and a contextual sub-nav that changed based on the selected mode. The structure reduced the number of taps to reach any feature, and the visual treatment (dark glass panels, tight typography, minimal iconography) kept the focus on the content rather than the chrome.