BUG BONANZA
My biggest goal as an artist (and as a person) is to have fun and learn, so I thought, why not combine my love for the natural world and video games into one project! This project was heavily inspired by some of my favorite games I played growing up, such as Animal Crossing: New Leaf, which stuck with me and made me appreciate the beauty in everyday life.
I chose bugs specifically for one very simple reason: they’re accessible to everyone! I was originally debating creating a fishing simulator, but I wanted people who play my game (and especially kids!) to be able to go out in the world and actively apply knowledge in the real world
Click here if you’d like to play!A Look Behind The Scenes
I started off my project by creating some quick sketches and putting them together in Adobe Animate. I originally had planned to create all my assets digitally, but I felt uninspired and decided to turn back to my roots with gouache paint. I quickly became excited, being able to incorporate physical media into my interactive project.
Here are some progress shots of my main forest environment, also painted with gouache. I later also took it into Procreate to draw over top of it and add some lighting.
Each bug had three main forms: a larger painting, a smaller animation, and a journal entry. You can see these down at the bottom! For each painting, I scanned it and took it into After Effects and used individual parts of the painting, such as the legs, to create movement through a puppet animation system. The smaller animations were hand-drawn in Procreate and span from 10 to 70 frames each.
SKYGLOW
Summer 2024 I had the opportunity to be a game design intern at IndieCade. We formed groups with other interns and started a five-week game jam. The jam centered on environmental issues, and our group chose to cover the topic of light pollution in a kid-friendly 2.5D platformer where the player encounters different animals affected by skyglow. I worked on the character designs, background art, and textures of 3D models made by Junyu Huo after my character sheets. Our group was awarded the "Jammers Top Choice" at the end of the jam.
Early Character Iterations
Concept Art
Character Sheets
Enviroment Assets
Model Textures
(Base models created by Junyu Huo)
Game made in collaboration with Farah Azim, Marcia Chen, Tomaz Edwards, Kimberly Hoang, Junyu Huo, Robin Wang, and Peter Vaňo.
BEAR GAME
Concept Art
Assets and Animations
Game made in collaboration with Sophie Gabriel and Joesph Willey