3D Artist
2D Art Contributions
IDO
Objective:
RTM (April 2020)
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16 Weeks
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UE4
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Team of 9 for 1st semester
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Team of 20 for 2nd semester
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Fully featured, 30-45 minute experience
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Main Roles:
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Creative Director
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Character Artist
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Concept Artist
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Narrative Designer
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Production Management
I wanted IDO's logo to hint at dreamscapes, evil nightmares, organic manifestations, spiritual mystery and astral travel, and this was the result.
Concept Art (Procreate)
As originator of the game, I had a huge responsibility to make sure people joining the dev team understood how the characters of this game needed to look and feel so as to ensure that players have the intended experience, so I designed concepts for each character in the game from the player character, to basic enemies and final bosses.
I needed to have scope in mind, so I had to design characters that can be easily reused or repurposed for the basic enemies, while also maintaining thematic unity between the basic enemies and the boss enemies that lead them, all while falling under the overall toon nightmare aesthetic of IDO.
To this end, basic enemies ended looking like malleable matter that would change color based on the world the player is in, manifested from the concept of "Bad Habits", while the bosses had more distinct attributes, manifested from the concept of "Inhibitions". I truly believe that form follows function, so every aspect of a character's look was tied to their abilities and lore in-game.
Environmental Art & Speed Painting
The environments of IDO were intended to house the different inhibitions the protagonist was going through. These inhibitions stemmed largely from things I had felt throughout my academic career as a game developer, especially since I felt that people in the cohort could relate to them.
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Interest for IDO was loud, and so I figured one of the best ways I could further express each level with authenticity was to ask people across the cohort what they felt about Fear, Stress, Anxiety, Impostor Syndrome and Depression, as well as to share of a time they felt any of these, and tweaked the direction of each environment with this in-mind as well as it's original concept.
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Time constraints were still very tight for the assignments under which these were created, and so I opted for efficient artwork that was as detailed as necessary in the least amount of time possible.
Animations & Marketing Material
The transitions between the Dreamscape Heart (level hub) were the times during which we could best deliver our narrative, and to aid that, one of our most meticulous narrative components involved a panel-to-panel comic book storytelling style.
For these, I animated 3 different impact 2D VFX for the start of the game, and I created the panel-to-panel transitions for every page* of every comic book scene using Adobe Animate, and Adobe Premiere. I then repurposed the 2D VFX animation for the marketing video by using it as a transition effect that hinted at the levels of the game by the order in which each effect was shown given their colors.
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For the animations of certain characters, I created 2D animations that express a very basic look into how the general action should go. These were intended to look lo-fi, so the stickmen and action smears did the trick.
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*Our official 2D Artists were Alex Cisneros and myself, and she created most of these comicbook pages. My role was more on the Creative Director side, however, as the deadlines neared, I aided in the development of the last comicbook pages to ensure we deliver quality work.
All soundtracks and sfx for the game were made by Regimeo Catayong.
UI Art
I always loved diegetic UI, so I wanted to make sure we limited our use of conventional menu systems. With this in mind, I still had to deliver a usable, understandable menu system within the allowed scope and budget. For the comic book scenes, I also created dialog boxes for each character.
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These menu screens needed to satisfy the needs of a frenetic 3rd person hack-n-slash game, so I had to fit in menus for a skill tree, objectives, collectibles and the game's lore. So, for Objectives, Collectibles and Lore I opted for a carousel-wheel selection menu on the left that indicated the content that would be shown on the center and right sections of the menu screens.
Considering that the player changed characters mid-game, and that this new character had its own similar, but different combat mechanics to that of the original character, we had to afford for those differences in the skill tree menu. This led to a 3 column downward-expanding tree with a cursor that indicated which skill's description would be shown on the right side of the menu screen.
...and more!
Other Contributions as Creative Director
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Provided player character's
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​3D Model & Cel-shader-friendly Textures
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Vertical Slice Animations
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Wrote the Narrative for the game
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Work closely with Art, Design & Tech Lead to ensure the game is on track
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Work closely with Producer to deliver the best expression of the game allowed by the scope
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Setup
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GDD & ASG Documentation
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Accountability Upholding Communications
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Automated scrum, reporting, reminders and crowd sourcing (Integromat, Zoho and Airtable)
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Main Takeaways From This Project
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Heroics are no good (talk DevOps)
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As my instructor told me: "become comfortable letting others suffer the consequences of their own inactions"
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Sometimes having something at all on time is better than to have nothing on time, or something "perfect" late.
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Scope is everything, and sometimes we have to consider crazier solutions to remedy the sacrifices that needed to be made to deliver under new scopes.
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Passion projects aren't the only projects you can expression your passion on.
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It is not just who's your team, but also how you choose to work with your team that decides the outcome of the project.