RPP Round 5 - Survival of the Fittest

For the final RPP round, each team had to make a mobile game.  My teammates were Chris Ressler, Sabrina Segura, Aryna Ou, and Abhijit Baruah.  We made a zombie-themed fitness game titled Survival of the Fittest.  In the game, you run (or walk, or bike) in order to win coins and materials to upgrade your survival camp and keep it running efficiently.  In camp mode, you can upgrade facilities, repair items damaged by the previous day's zombie attacks, and purchase items.  The idea was to have players be motivated to exercise a few times a week to keep their camp from being overrun by zombies.

We did use assets packs for some of the buildings and props, but I made a total of 22 models/facilities, including 3 types of weapons, the factory, research camp, water camp, medical camp, bunker, turret guns, and many smaller assets like a laptop, file folders, and various other props.  I tried to match the low-poly style of the models from the military asset pack we were using, as well as the stylized texturing.

Some of the assets I made for Survival of the Fittest

Title Screen

Choose to go for a run or check our your survival camp

Select activity (walking, running, or biking) and input a distance

Most basic camp - generator needs to be upgraded

Camp with generator and medical camp upgrades

Upgraded camp, with spots to upgrade the research camp, factory, and storage facility

Fully-upgraded camp

RPP Round 4 - Anchor

The fourth round of prototypes was meant to focus on storytelling.  Along with Gabe Lopez, Dylan Micheli, Ryan Fisher, and Ciara Sadaka, I helped make Anchor, a story-based platformer about a couple living in the Arctic who meet up each week to watch the Northern Lights.  The game features 4 levels, with several voice lines, animated cutscenes, cloth physics, and a warmth meter.  Each level has environmental changes as winter progresses, including different paths (areas blocked off by snow, new areas that open because water has frozen over, etc.), water turning to ice, increasingly deeper snow, and a warmth meter that depletes faster.

This was the first round that we were able to use asset packs (which we did for the rocks, snow, trees, and some other environmental assets).  I modeled and textured the two characters for this game, as well as making the text for the start screen.

The story (WARNING: SPOILERS):  The nights start out with moderate weather - everything seems fine as the player meets his partner for their weekly date under the Northern Lights.  As the weeks progress, the partner's health declines, and her voice lines are more cryptic, hinting that she may be leaving soon, that he should keep exploring, and that she loves him.  After showing up late on the third week, she doesn't show up at all to the next date, and when the player goes to search for her, he sees a medical helicopter and flashing lights at her house.

The player character (left) and partner (right)

Textured models for the player and partner (poncho on the partner not pictured here)

Start screen

Level one - jumping ability, with scarf cloth physics and fire that refills warmth meter

The river, not yet frozen over

Approaching the Northern Lights - notice the deep snow and warmth meter almost empty

Final cutscene

RPP Round 3 - Tree of Life

The third round of RPP was supposed to be an educational game, so I helped create Tree of Life along with Henry Bell, Jessica Caplova, Conner Kaye, and Patrick Mann.  This game has three levels, representing different time periods in an alien planet's history, that you visit and take pictures of the life forms on the planet, organizing the photos on an in-game tablet based on information given and visual cues to create a full evolutionary tree.  

I made the models and textures for 9 out of 15 life forms, and animated all 15.  One of the most interesting and difficult parts of this project was brainstorming unique ideas for how each life form would move based on their lifestyle and morphology, as well as designing each creature so they made some amount of sense visually and evolutionarily.  

Main Menu

Mission Brief (with voice acting!)

Level 1 - 96 million years before present day

Level 2 - 50 million years before present - creature textures didn't load :(

In-game tablet - featuring screenshots of each creature and a description

Level 3 (present day) - in camera mode, which identifies each creature

Level 3 (present day)

Evolutionary tree on the tablet, where you see your screenshots and drag them to the appropriate spots - you are teleported to the next time period when you 'Check' your work and it is correct

RPP Round 2 - FIEANite

The second game I helped make for RPP is titled FIEANite - the other team members were Danielle Geraci, Grant Bentley, Nathan Devereux, and Parker Ibold. The theme for this round was a game that is 'fun' to play.  We wanted to make a game that was relatable and took place in the cohort space where we spend most of our time! The game contains 3 levels - one main level (the cohort space), and two mini-levels/games the player enters by collecting the missing poster pieces.

"A lazy FIEA student has procrastinated their assignment. When they walk into the building late at night, they notice that there are 2 game posters missing from the wall. Since they were the last one in the building, they know they’ll be in big trouble if the posters aren’t put back up. Thus, they begin their search for the missing posters. Little do they know, a student from the previous cohort failed out of FIEA and put a curse on the posters…

Locate the portal to exit the video games the posters represent within the time given. If time runs out, the portal will close and the student will be trapped within the game poster forever!"

Link to play FIEANite: https://dgeraci.itch.io/fieanite

Here is 2D art I made for the posters and the main enemies for each game level, followed by gameplay screenshots. I also modeled and textured all the assets in the main level/cohort space!

RPP Round 1 - The Night Watch

I will be making posts of each of the RPP projects I made last semester, starting with round 1 - making a tabletop game.  

This is The Night Watch, a game made in Tabletop Simulator by myself, Audrey Luce, Brennen Cruz, Roscoe Generato, and Scott Buck. The game includes 4 different character classes with unique traits, hurt points, custom dice, tons of event and item cards, terrain tiles (forest, mountains, and ruins), Gold Tokens, Mage Wish Tokens, Bardic Inspiration Tokens, and the Night Watch Token. I made and textured all the 3D models (all tokens, hurt points, coins, chest), as well as drawing the 2D art for the start and end tiles, custom dice, and item cards.

Objective: Adventurers set out on a job to transport gold between kingdoms. Every day, they strategically plan out the route they’ll take during the day and then prepare for the following night. Each night, a different adventurer will take the Night Watch and deal with whatever occurs - a charming merchant, an ancient puzzle, or even bloodthirsty trolls. The party must protect themselves and, most importantly, protect the gold. By order of the king, it is the party’s duty to find extra gold and loot to accommodate for the inflation between kingdoms.

Link to play this game: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2591140021

[note: you do have to have Tabletop Simulator downloaded first]

My 2D and 3D Art

Gameplay Screenshot

Fantasy Sword Concept Art Project

I made this independent project for Industry Review (and for fun, because I like making weapons and cool stuff!).  It's based on a piece of WoW concept, which I tried to replicate using 3D and 2D techniques.  Here's the final image from Photoshop, original concept art by Maksym Gordiyenko, raw renders from Substance Painter and Unreal Engine, the high-res sculpt from ZBrush, and the game-res wireframe and UVs.

Champions of Ashe - Archetype Orisha Cards

I haven't posted much work here that wasn't directly for a submitted assignment, so over Winter Break I'd like to go back and revisit some of the work I did RPP and other projects that never made it to the blog!  

For Production for Media, the cohort was broken into large teams and had to create game pitches for a non-American audience.  The team I was on pitched 'Champions of Ashe,' a stylized arena-style PvP aimed at a Nigerian audience.  The artists on the team made some great concept work for this project - I drew 4 cards depicting the 'Archetype Orishas' that the player would be able to choose between (these would determine the player's weapons and abilities for a match).

This project was inspired by the Yoruba religion, which tells of many Orisha (powerful spirits), popular in Nigeria and the surrounding regions.  Each Orisha has certain elements, powers, colors, accessories, and history associated with them, which I tried to incorporate into the designs.  If you don't know much about Yoruba, I would encourage you to do some research - I did a lot of reading in preparation for this project, and it was really neat to delve into such a colorful tradition!

Here is a slide from the presentation for context (slide put together by Audrey, and circular abilities at the bottom of each card made by Cameron), followed by close-ups of each card.

3D Art Week 15 - Final Display

I spent a lot of time polishing the details in my environment and working on things I'd meant to work on but never got around to.  This includes addressing all the critiques from last week and any I hadn't gotten to from earlier (mainly, I started from scratch with the skydome and all the foliage), and also worked on the ground texture's tiling, re-making the moss/greener layer.

Last week's critiques:

-sky color should only go into the emissive channel (shouldn't change when I click 'unlit' mode)
-look at references for the sky: desaturate the colors, work on contrast, make clouds a bit thinner and smaller
-make sure the stars aren't moving (no stars in the cloud layer)
-re-do grass and populate it more densely/naturally
-fix collision on the column so the skull can be placed into it
-skull texture looks very dark in VR

Common Art Week 15 - Final Delivery

Over the past couple of weeks, Team 4 has been working hard to polish the proxy edition of the VR Mad Tea Party experience.  Se had our usual meetings before Thanksgiving break and decided on our goals for this final delivery of the experience.  I made some final proxy assets (a grandfather clock, 3 variations of signs for the forest, a paint bucket and paintbrush, party banner, log, and the Mad Hatter's severed ear, eye, and finger.)  I also fixed a couple of the textures from last week by creating better UVs and added more divisions/smoothing to some of the rougher proxies.  We made some big decisions this past week as well, including changing our art style and completely re-making our presentation PowerPoint again!