Game Design & Development Minor

Artist, Sound & Art Director

Planetary Adventures

In the first part of the minor Game Design & Development we worked in teams of three. All teams exist of an Artist, a Game Designer and a Developer.
My job as an Artist was to design an art style that fits the idea of the game, to make all assets and ready them for hand-over and do all sound design and music.

Visual

For this game I chose a 32-bit style, as seen with the Nintendo GameBoy Advance. This was decided upon after speaking with the team about our game idea. It fits the world exploration idea really well as it gives the game enough detail to make it interesting, but also not too graphically intense to make the main game mechanic (turning the world around like a Rubix Cube) too hard to make in our time frame.

For the sprites I took my inspiration from games as The Legend of Zelda and Pokémon. Pixel art is quite time intensive, but I am really happy with the result.

Audio

Even though sound design and music wasn't mandatory to be made by the team, it seemed like a fun part of the project to tackle. I wrote these two tracks for the home planet and the lava planet of the game.



To give it that real "retro feel" I opted for something that sounds like it was produced by a PSG. I used some of the original sounds made by the chip that was also in the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). It was a real fun experience trying something new!

Havoc

For the second part of the minor we had to work in teams of approximately fifteen people. We had fourteen weeks to build a 3D game. To make sure this is possible, we named a Producer, Art Director, Head of Marketing, Lead Game Designer and Lead Developer. I worked as the Art Director for this project.

As Art Director it was my job to make sure we finish everything on time, that I know what everyone is working on and to help people in the right direction when needed. I had daily meetings with both the team and the other leads.
This all took quite some time, but I found time to work on concept art, the user interface, audio and even tried some 3D modeling.

Art

Shown above is a video where you can see me working on some concept art in Photoshop. I used to draw all the time as a kid, so it was fun to see if I still had it. After concept art I focussed on the UI.
This game takes place in the far future, so I wanted to portray a futuristic feeling. I sat down with the Game Design team and the Development team to figure out what was needed. As a UI designer does, I sorted everything in the right categories and worked on drew some wireframes. I tested this with the team, made some iterations and finally came to a UI that fits the game really well.

I also designed the HUD (Heads Up Display, what you see during gameplay). I took the information I got from the Game Design team and worked on visualising that. It doesn't distract the user too much, but it does supply the important information.

UI pre-game UI tijdens pauze

At the end of the minor we were asked to organise an event. It took place at a venue located in Rotterdam. Visitors got to play our game and we got a lot of fun reactions in return. It was a nice reward for all the hard work we put in the game.

Havoc Event

Audio

For audio I focused on music only. In contrast to the first game, this game is a lot more realistic and there is much more visual detail. I tried to match the music to that.

I chose to use synths mainly, as this can give a very futuristic sound.
The music was made in Logic Pro X, with the built-in plugins and Toontrack EZDrummer 2.