https://globalgamejam.org/2020/games/crabtastrophe-0 

"Crabtastrophe” is a first-person, action game, where the player repairs plumbing and fights off crabs while they try to flood the room. With semi-realistic graphics, fun plumbing tool, anti-crustacean weapon, hilarious physics and crabs!"

Game Design - Saxon Hutchinson, Blayne Cuzner

Art - Robert Dickson, Lani Parker, Meg Groeneveld, Alyssa Barry, Chris O'Neill

Programming/Blueprints - Francisco Romano, Saxon Hutchinson, Robert Dickson

The theme for this year was "Repair" and the team I was on had decided to answer that theme with "Crabtastrophe". We had stuck with the idea that we wanted to include crabs in the game early on in the process and we just rolled with it. The game didn't end up too terribly completed, but there is some interaction and also, hilarious crabs and their physics.

And these were the assets I had worked on for the game! Some of them didn't actually make it in, but oh well I had fun making them.

It was my second Global Game Jam ever attended, my fourth game jam overall, it was a blessing to work with such amazing people amongst the mishaps and more importantly fun that we had. <3

This was a project I had started last year, and this was the initial progress from it that I'm going to rework soon!

Mood board (from created style guide)

I had created a style guide for the project, which the following image is an excerpt from. The look I wanted for the library environment was dark and dusty, some baroque influences in the assets, and I had really wanted to play around with lighting for the scene. I had compiled a mood board and then some even more reference images later on in the style guide to direct my inspiration.

Concepts/Paintovers

I had gone back and forth on sketches for quite a bit, I definitely was running around trying to figure out the scale I had wanted for the scene in the early stages. I then had come to these quickly coloured concepts/paint-overs from a greybox I had done, starting to feel more satisfied and my approach was starting to become clearer. I then also had to think what assets could be modular within the scene, what would be more unique and what were the key features/focal points. 

And I also had to start thinking about lighting, which I wanted to play on the contrast between a main colder light and some warmer lights dispersed in the scene.

Blockout pieces

I had started to construct blockout pieces for the assets in Maya, really trying to test modularity as it's something I want to get much better at focusing on. And this is what I had ended up with.

Blockout pieces within Greybox

I had then taken the blockout pieces into a simple layout greybox I had constructed beforehand and I was really trying to figure out if placements of assets around were going to be okay within the scene. I had felt it was a reasonable attempt at the start, but looking back I am unsure about the free-standing bookcases and if I might do something to jazz them up a bit next time with different positioning or looking to build them into the overhanging second floor perhaps (?).

First Rough Lighting Pass in UE4

This was my first pass at lighting the scene in UE4, which was going to be my engine of choice for the project. To be honest, I wasn't super satisfied (even if I was adhering to Kelvin colour temperatures) and it's something I'll continue poking around at in my next iteration.

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

Test Prop

This has been part one! I'm planning to return with an update as I continue reworking this environment!

This was a painting project that I had completed for my friend's birthday of his WoW character in July last year. It was an illustration idea that I had started in 2018 and this was my initial trial at the image:

Trial (16-17/07/2018)

I then had decided it wasn't quite what I wanted to get out of the piece, and so then I went back to the drawing board and ruminated on the piece for a bit until 2019 rolled around.

And here's the following gif for the process of it!

WIP GIF Progress

FINAL IMAGE (Completed July ‎16, ‎2019):

With this piece, I definitely had an interesting time trying to test my colour theory knowledge, recolouring from grayscale, and it was also a bit of a challenge for myself to get it "done" in a shorter time span I gave myself.

There are some things that I would have changed with the piece, but trying not to be so precious and perfectionistic is still something I'm working on.

Back in July, I had done another 48-hour game jam, working on Dungeon Chef which was a Unity game project initially conceptualised in a Proof Of Concept unit, by Jonah Bauer. I had worked on it as an artist with Jonah (Artist), and with Chris O'Neil (Artist), Anna-Rose Barrett (Artist) and Francisco Romano (Programmer), Roderick Fitzgerald (Music).

* background image done by Jonah Bauer

Game Overview:

Dungeon Chef is 2.5D, Endless Survival, Menu Based Game, where you play as the Chef for a Dungeon Party. Keep your Party Healthy as they fight Monsters and bring you back new Ingredients to experiment with.

I had worked on the following things:

Chef Character (Animated Sprite)

This was actually my first time in a while animating in a pixel art style, so it was interesting to get back into and do something different than usual. The Chef actually had to be split up between the main body and his arms so that his arms could be animating in front of the cauldron sprite.

Logo (Animated)

Here's my animated logo for the main title. I was originally going to do a static logo, but then I had thought that an animated one would be much more interesting.

Buttons, and Inventory (UI)

I had done the Inventory sprite for the UI for which the items that the adventurers brought back could be stored to make meals to feed them, and I had also done the buttons. The inventory sprite was supposed to be reminiscent of a (milk) crate but yet fit into the colour scheme of the reds, oranges and yellows.

Some of the Food Icons (UI)

There were 25 items that the adventurers could bring back to the chef to cook, and I had done 6 of them and the rest was handled by Anna Barrett and Jonah Bauer! We joked around a lot with the items and I certainly took some fun artistic liberty after we set out what kind of items we were going to feature.

It was a good game jam, full of jokes, memes and a lot of sleep deprivation. And overall it was a very lovely team of people to work with and I'm very impressed with what we ended up with at the end! <3

This is a blog post I've been meaning to catch up for a while now! In January I did Global Game Jam 2019 back in January, which was the first 48hr game jam I've worked on. I worked alongside two other artists (Kelsey Mutandadzi, Cassandra Zanin), and two programmers (Andrew Fitzpatrick, David Passlow). Our project was Home Is Where You're Hostage, developed in Unity, and we were just determined to have some fun with the project and get something out quick during the 48 hours.

Here are some of the things I worked on for the project, and honestly I learnt quite a bit and what I would do better next time:

I worked on the textures for a bunch of models that Cassandra had produced, using 3Dcoat and quickly pushing out handpainted textures as fast as I could. We had various props that the cat was pushing off towards the edge of the table, and then distraction items to try to mitigate and delay against them falling off the table.

I also produced a couple of models of my own. Towards the end, it was getting to the point of development where there wasn't enough time to model a few of our last distractions so I had drawn up some images to be implemented as sprites in the engine instead. I also had learnt what not to do when modelling a string model (feathers on a stick) if I was potentially going to rig it (keep it straight, not already posed when creating the geometry). I definitely learnt that lesson.

Anyways, it was a lot of fun and some good experience for the first time back then for working in a very short limited amount of time with a team. It also had served in preparing me for the next 48-hour game jam I had done (July 2019). I'll be coming out with a blog post soon about that!

Hi so I thought I might as well start blog posting an compiling some stuff that I've been working on amongst the time I've been preparing some portfolio-ready pieces to put up. These sketches and WIPs will be ranging from personal work, concepts from an environment I've been working on and some commission WIPs, and some will have a following blog post with updates on them.

Dec 2018

1) [WIP] Witch Character Project

Back in early December (7th) I had decided I wanted to do something with some of my concepts I had worked on back in October 2017, which at the time I had to put on the shelf due to RSI. So I later combined elements from two of my designs, mostly from the left character shown in the [(WIP) Concepts] on the following image, but I had also liked the look of the hat conceived on the character on the right. 

I had then worked on a quick orthographic (my front one being more polished than the back and sides), eager to get into blockout in Zbrush with some primitives. 

I'm still touching on this project here and there but not many big pushes due to classes, other work and IRL.

2) "Winter Holiday Secret Santa Exchange"

I had signed up for an art community Discord/Twitter's secret santa exchange, for which I did a person's World of Warcraft Night Elf for the piece. I had a lot of fun with this, and I was glad to get it done whilst trying to further develop the way I do linework with a harder brush than usual.

 3) [WIP] Orthographic for a friend's character

Technically the idea for the project was conceived back in October in 2018, but I had been chipping away at the project during my free time whilst working on course work. Needless to say, in my free time later next month (2019) I'm going to revisit this and update it and continue my anatomy studies.

Jan 2019

[January I had worked on GGJ (which will be an incoming blog post covering my work for the team I was in)]

March 2019

1) Asset sketch concepts for Game Environment

These were a few sketches from an assignment for some of the planned assets which were heavily baroque and general 17th-18th century furniture, which I searched through many antique websites to find inspiration.

2) First test in Spine 2D

This was my first foray into using Spine 2D after consuming many videos on the program and what one can achieve with it. I made a quick image of a Final Fantasy Moogle which I had cut up to trial getting used to the UI, the systems and to see if I can pick up any ideas on how to format my images for next time. 

I learnt quite a bit with a hands on experience with using the program, and I'm looking forward to further endeavours with it.

April 2019

I worked on this during a few live Twitch streams for a friend of her World of Warcraft Nightborne character. The beard was a placeholder just to try and figure out what I might do for it, and I might post a final version in a blog post in the near future.

2) Sethrak sketch for friend

This was another sketch for another friend where I took some inspiration from a photo of an actual snake which my friend had posted into a group chat, but I really wanted to explore a softer and more visible brushstroke look for the piece.

That's all for previous month's work, and I'll hopefully be back soon shortly with some stuff for May-June.