Character Art & Design

Early on in production, before we had settled on our Pod structure for teams, the art department was assignd various tasks. The first few being intended to help us narrow down a design for our main character.

Setting the Mood

Working off the early underworld theme the art team had settled on, I browsed pinterest, tumblr, and deviantart trying to find things that I felt best fit my vision for the game, and constructed a moodboard for what our main character might look like. The key things that stood out to me here were boots, a hood or hat to cover their head, and a dark / shadowy face.

It Builds Character

Working off of my moodboard, and the original underworld theme we were given, I created this character design. The tentacles were intended to allow for animations that were uncoupled from the player’s movement, and also to add to the creepy factor

Reeling It In

After all of the members of the art team pitched their designs for the main character, I was tasked with vectorizing another team member's design. As the artist's sketch had no color scheme, I made multiple different sprites and ran them by one of the art leads to get approval. Ultimately, we went with the brown and grey design.

Finalizing the Design

After all of the designs were vectorized, the whole team voted on which design to use for the main character. My design got 2nd place, behind the design that I had been asked to vectorize. I was then assigned to create the sprites for each direction the character would face, pictured above.

Lead Animator

During my time as lead animator for WolverineSoft Studio, I had several respoinsibilites. From creating our asset workflow, to creating learning resources for other team members, to reviewing others' animations. Pictured below is a workshop I gave for general WolverineSoft members and studio animators to learn how to animate in Unity using the 2D Animation package.

Walking Around

One of the first things I rigged and animated for Dreamwillow was the player character, as they were the first finished sprite for the game. At first I had difficulty working within the constraints of the 2D Animation package and learning the workflow, but after animating the first view, I got the hang of it, and made quick work of the rest.

Idle Hands

Pictured to the right is the main character's idle animation I animated.

Polish Work

Finished rather late in the production cycle, I didn't have time to send the above enemy back to it's original animator to rework, and instead opted to polish the frames myself, adding in followthrough, anticipation, etc, to try and finish the product before the end of our last sprint.

Lead VFX Artist

During Dreamwillow's production, I was one of two artists tasked with creating particle systems, and of the two I was in charge.

Portals

Pictured to the left is a gif of the particle system I created for the level exit portal. Particles are spawned every few seconds with a long trail and a color that changes over time, and in the center of the portal is a force field that pulls nearby particles in, causing the cool orbiting effect. If I had had the time, I would have finished it off with a shader on the orange ellipse of the portal so it wasn't just a solid orange.

UI/UX Designer

I was the pod lead for the UI pod, and the primary artist working on the team. This meant that all UI decisions went through me, and that I created the majority of the UI assets that made it into the final build of the game. From the HUD, to the main menu, to the pause and settings menu.

Just like Isaac

Pictured to the right is an early mockup for the HUD. It features a thick black bar at the top where all UI elements are placed. This was at the behest of one of our designers, as they wanted to replicate the User Interface of The Binding Of Isaac, which features a similar black bar. This was intended to stop the UI elements from blocking the player's view of any enemies or projectiles.

Shifting Around

Pictured to the left is a later iteration, in which the black bar has been removed, and the currency display has moved to the bottom right corner. This change was made as the art team had felt that it gave a more natural feel to the UI and had a less intrusive presence than the black bar.

Putting on the Mask

Getting close to the end here, this is basically the final layout of the UI. The blocky squares have been swapped for round masks and a counter has been added for health potions. The only changes made after this were updated the sprites to better fit the theme.

Taking a Pause

Finally, we have the pause and settings menu. For this menu, I touched up another artists design for the buttons, animated everything, chose the font, and placed all elements.