MEET THE TEAM

Being project lead as well as lead environmental artist, I was in-charge of making sure the story comes through the environment and the environment makes sense with the story. Working as a mixed medium team proved to be a lot more difficult trying to mesh two differently styles together but I think the end product was successful in merging both our ideas into a cohesive project. I heavily relied on kit-bashing to fully populate the level but I also created bespoke assets for the graveyard area within the walking simulator. The Epic Games marketplace provided tons of free asset packs which matched our desired visual aesthetic, it was a matter of finding the right assets to make the environment feel 'lived in' and 'believable'.

Playing more around with darker lighting, making the mood and atmosphere match the story as well as creating custom god rays to elevate the scene into a good 2.5D hybrid so that the 2D animations don't feel out of place within the environment. I had a lot of fun trying to play with the depth of field further in the background and ways to utilize our current camera perspective to our advantage. After kit-bashing our forest environment, I was able to focus on creating my bespoke assets for the graveyard area.

This was my first time using zbrush as well, so it was a good way for me to practice my asset making skills and allowed me to further go into detail with my models. I then simply put them through Substance Painter using the sculpt as a high-poly asset to create normal maps. I had also created some small candle assets to add to that spooky atmosphere, I ended up not sculpting or doing much more with them as they were too small to notice within the walking simulator and it would've been too dark to notice them anyhow. It was after this point I started to populate the environment within Unreal more and more with the assets I've created and kit-bashing again to fill up the depth of the backgrounds.

I also ended up having to work with all the blueprints within the project, as well as sort out a music managing blueprint for the audio we have. This was an enlightening experience for me as I was pretty much new to blueprint and didn't know the extent of what blueprints could offer, but through trial and error and lots of tutorials, I was able to enhance the experience of our project.

As the lead 2D animator, it is my job to make sure that all the animations in the game are up to scratch with the rest of the project. My task was to create both believable animations as well as a character design that would match up with the art style we were chasing. Along with the help of Harlin Meikle, a team member who left the project in the earlier stages of development, I created the main character Kiki.