/ Soya's Stuff /

Marie (Summer 2020)
Concept Artist

A 2D sidescrolling adventure, about a young girl named Marie. A simple errand trip brings new perspectives from her neighbors, friends, and strangers alike.

Done as a worldbuilding and concept art exercise over the course of the project term.

Basic Character Concepts

NPCs in the game are unique, each with their own motifs and silhouettes that relate to their narrative roles and themes. They are designed to be instantly identifiable, so that the player can pick them out easily against the game's environment. In contrast, the player character is designed to be as plain as possible while looking like she fits into the cast, and so has nearly no individual motifs that stand out.

Character Concepts

The game is a largely plot-driven one, but the plot is driven by the characters, so the characters need to be visually conveying their most important traits. Character palettes are also done in a wide range of colours to suit their personality and stand out from their environment.
This teapot lady is designed around her role as a traditional person with her simple outfit, but with elegant long gloves. Her head is made of glass and decorated with intricate but useless filigrees, giving her a pretty but shallow feel. Her tea is a sickly yellow, hopefully asking the player "Is it really tea?".

Minion Design

The game relies very heavily on dialogue, and thus close attention is paid to the characters' dialogue. Speech bubbles were left white to bring the player's focus to the text in an otherwise noisy background. Both the bubble and the text are slightly animated with a quivering look, reflecting the speaker's personality. Each character is unique, and thus would have different speaking styles and voices. While the game currently has no plans to be voiced, the speech bubbles fill in that gap by being personalized to each character in various ways - shape, animation, font and colour.

Environment Concepts

This is a rough draft of the game's environment. The areas were to adhere to the same master palette for cohesion. Both an example of an exterior environment and an interior environment are included. The rooms are designed around their respective owners to give a sense of implied narrative, such as Marie's bed having lots of plush toys, and the scattered papers all about Erhard's room.

Environment Concepts (Shops)

The drafts here include the various shops that can be found on the main street. Each shop has a distinct sub-palette based off the game's master palette, in order for the player to quickly identify visually where they are.

Environment (First Pass)

This early version of Marie's room was used to work out furniture and room sizes relative to the player's height. The room was a lot more simplistic and rough, with blobby shapes as plush toys. To fit with the bedroom owner, the room was coloured with oranges and reds that matched her hair.

Environment (Day)

Later iterations of the room would have more defined furniture, and more personal effects added like glow-in-the-dark stickers on the wall and desk and crumpled paper trash. Lighting and shading was also used to give the room a better sense of depth. Interactable objects have a thin white outline around them that is easily seen without looking too out of place in the environment.

Environment (Night)

Different times of the day would light the room differently, so a separate darker palette was used for nighttime environments. The character also has an adjusted palette to fit in better. Glowing green accents and stickers help to make the room less visually monotonous in this environment where it is harder to see details, and thus the white outline for interactable objects is also brighter.

Environment (Outside)

This shophouse street is the first outside area the player steps into after leaving the house, where they live on top of a convenience store. This was done as a scale test to see how the player's size was in relation to the exterior environment, as well as to test the art style. In the early versions of the draft, the convenience store was extremely cluttered and detailed to closely resemble real life, which was revised later as it took too much focus away from the area.

Environment (Outside 2)

Foreground and background elements are added in this iteration, as well as the city skyline in the background. Foreground and background objects are rendered as single-colour silhouettes so as not to add too much visual clutter while maintaining the sense of space. NPCs are also placed to check for scaling and spacing issues, to ensure that the player can comfortably focus on them. The sky at the back is green to attract the player's attention on first sight before settling in without being too boring or eye-straining, as the skyline is used to give context clues to the player about other game areas.

Building Concept

Special attention is paid also to the building in the skyline, as this is a major area the player has to go to, hence its prominence in the background. It is very eye-catching (maybe even eye-straining!), mostly for narrative purpose. It takes elements from both art deco and brutalist styles, making a strange mix where decorative filigrees are 'pasted' on top of grey concrete, leading to a 'disguised' look. The top is done with architectural errors on purpose, to hint to the nature of the building's owner.

UI Concepts

The game's UI would be based off retro computer interfaces, with icons for various functions as well as a simple text display for quest logging in the event the player requires help. To bring focus to the game menus, there would be a slight scanline and blur effect on the game screen. Things like volume sliders would be made using Unicode symbols rather than images, and menu items are drawn similar to icons in a file explorer.

Early Menu System

At first the UI was planned to be black and white in order to stand out from the colourful game environment, but was later changed to a tight palette to make it look less harsh and jarring while still being able to be seen easily on both the day and night palettes. The notepad display was to have different colours and fonts for dialog lines, to keep with the theme of characters having unique colours and fonts to represent them.

Menu System

The menu was adjusted to have icons in a sidebar for easy access, and out-of-focus menus would be dimmed to show which menu the player was currently looking at. In keeping with the computer interface theme, a console was added as an alternative to the notepad, mostly for testing palettes against the environment. Maybe it would be used for something else in the future.

Tempoland (Fall 2016 - Spring 2017)
Level Designer, UI Designer, Artist

A 2.5D musical platformer, where you traverse through a strange dreamlike world where everything moves to the rhythm of the beat.

Download here, from the Digipen Games Gallery.

Contributions:

Concept art and key visual art for mechanic mockups, level flow and aesthetic
Platformer level design
Artist and animator for game characters using Krita and Spine
Visual artist for game environment and UI

Running sprite of Lorem, the player character

Early concepts

The earliest iteration of the game was intended to be set in space with the player navigating a space station, moving to the beat of the music similar to Crypt Of The Necrodancer. It even had the heartbeat bar at the top! Later iterations would keep the neon-lights theme and palette, with the environment darkened to emphasize the platforming elements and the player character. In place of the bar, the obstacles in the game would reflect their beat timers individually, to ensure players could focus on the path ahead instead of elsewhere.

Game Mechanics

The mechanics were adapted to having the player predict and react to patterns, similar to a bullet-hell style game. This was developed into the rhythm-based obstacles in the final version. The player not only identifies the obstacles visually, but predicts their movements via the music.

Character Design

The game's visual design was set to be cute and bubbly with bouncy animations. The base of the characters all lack visible elbows and sometimes knees, allowing their movements to appear more fluid. Since the environment of the city is mostly dark purples, reds and yellows, the player is coloured bright pink to stand out. Other characters are then dressed in various shades of darker and less saturated colours.

Environment Design

The game takes place in a city at night before transitioning towards the dawn. Each level has a seperate sub-palette progressing from blue to purple to orange, to reflect the player's progress. From the city, to a floating carnival, and finally up a tower to the horizon.

UI (Title Screen)

As an extension of the player character, the game's UI is themed around her music player. The "song select" screen is used as a level selector, and The levels correspond to their respective background music tracks. Other panels include the game's settings and help file.

UI (Pause Menu)

As an extension of the player character, the game's UI is themed around her music player. The "song select" screen is used as a level selector, and The levels correspond to their respective background music tracks. Other panels include the game's settings and help file.

Nekomancer (Summer - Fall 2018)
3D Artist

Jazeena the Summoner has to brave the dungeon in order to restore the world's dwindling magic in this top-down 3D dungeon crawler - but she's barely able to summon more than a cat, and the dungeon has claimed adventurers much stronger than her! Surely the sight of seeing so many dead bodies littered around would make her turn tail! Unless... Well, surely summoning their spirits to help won't hurt?

Download here, from the Digipen Games Gallery.

Contributions:

Drew concept art and key visual art for playable characters and enemies
Modeled and animated characters in Blender with Motion Capture
Created UI assets for use in the HUD
Made promotional material for use in the gallery display

Early Player Concepts

Jazeena's main motifs were the book and stick she carries, as they were major visual components to differentiate the player character from the rest of the cast. These prototypes all have a varying sense of personality, from upbeat to aloof. An inept magician would have flashy and flowy clothes that would be obstructive in movement, but since Jazeena is running around in a dungeon, most of the robes have been altered into 'magical girl' style skirts instead.

Player Character

Eventually we settled on the yellow one as Jazeena's final design with some elements incorporated from the others, as well as cleaned up her silhouette to make her look more adventurer-ish rather than fragile. From the top view, she looks similar to a yellow cat thanks to her cute coat! Her staff seems to be comprised of two different staves taped together haphazardly at one end, and she makes her hair float using magic, making for quite the airheaded personality.

Minion Design

The decision to make the minions into cats only came after Jazeena's design was finalized. Originally, they were to be normal-looking adventurers she resurrected. There are different classes of adventurers: a hero, an alchemist, a thief, a knight and an archer. Over time, they were given individual personalities as well that they carry over into being undead spirit cats, to showcase each's untimely demise and makes for entertaining banter during the dungeon levels.

HUD Design

Being able to identify at a glance the position of the minions and enemies as well as the player was vital for gameplay. As the ground of the levels were predominantly grey, the bright orange selectors and orange position markers would be easy to spot, allowing the player to easily understand what is happening in the game and quickly give commands. White markers were used to mark the player's position, so that they can quickly identify if they are standing in danger zones and move out of the way.

HUD Design

The player can summon up to 4 minions, and the bottom bar displays the present number of minions as well as their types and available health. The various types are color-coded and placed in the D-Pad for quick access. As the player can also give commands to the individual minions or to all of them as a group, the colours for commands and important buttons are also in a bolder palette to ensure readability even in a brightly-lit dungeon.

Where's My Mummy? (Summer - Fall 2019)
3D Artist

In this 3D action platformer, Set has broken into Anubis's temple and stolen his mummy! Help Anubis get it back - and maybe teach Set a quick lesson about messing with his things!

Download here, from the Digipen Games Gallery.

Contributions:

Concept art and key visual art for playable characters and enemies
Modeled and animated characters in Blender with Motion Capture
Drew promotional material for the game gallery display

Early concepts

The earliest iteration of the game was intended to be set in space with the player navigating a space station, moving to the beat of the music similar to Crypt Of The Necrodancer. Later iterations would keep the neon-lights theme and palette, with the environment darkened to emphasize the platforming elements and the player character.

Game Mechanics

The mechanics were adapted to having the player predict and react to patterns, similar to a bullet-hell style game. This was developed into the rhythm-based obstacles in the final version. The player not only identifies the obstacles visually, but predicts their movements via the music.

Character Design

The game's visual design was set to be cute and bubbly with bouncy animations. The base of the characters all lack visible elbows and sometimes knees, allowing their movements to appear more fluid. Since the environment of the city is mostly dark purples, reds and yellows, the player is coloured bright pink to stand out. Other characters are then dressed in various shades of darker and less saturated colours.

Environment Design

The game takes place in a city at night before transitioning towards the dawn. Each level has a seperate sub-palette progressing from blue to purple to orange, to reflect the player's progress. From the city, to a floating carnival, and then

UI (Title Screen)

As an extension of the player character, the game's UI is themed around her music player. The "song select" screen is used as a level selector, and The levels correspond to their respective background music tracks. Other panels include the game's settings and help file.

UI (Pause Menu)

As an extension of the player character, the game's UI is themed around her music player. The "song select" screen is used as a level selector, and The levels correspond to their respective background music tracks. Other panels include the game's settings and help file.

Math//Magic (Fall 2021)
2D UI Artist

A simple mathematics-based RPG where you solve increasingly complicated equations to destroy monsters.

This was a collaboration project with another development team, so there isn't a public download. Sorry!

Contributions:

Drew portraits and UI sprites for battle HUD
Created button elements for game menus

Early concepts

The earliest iteration of the game was intended to be set in space with the player navigating a space station, moving to the beat of the music similar to Crypt Of The Necrodancer. Later iterations would keep the neon-lights theme and palette, with the environment darkened to emphasize the platforming elements and the player character.

Game Mechanics

The mechanics were adapted to having the player predict and react to patterns, similar to a bullet-hell style game. This was developed into the rhythm-based obstacles in the final version. The player not only identifies the obstacles visually, but predicts their movements via the music.

Character Design

The game's visual design was set to be cute and bubbly with bouncy animations. The base of the characters all lack visible elbows and sometimes knees, allowing their movements to appear more fluid. Since the environment of the city is mostly dark purples, reds and yellows, the player is coloured bright pink to stand out. Other characters are then dressed in various shades of darker and less saturated colours.

Environment Design

The game takes place in a city at night before transitioning towards the dawn. Each level has a seperate sub-palette progressing from blue to purple to orange, to reflect the player's progress. From the city, to a floating carnival, and then

UI (Title Screen)

As an extension of the player character, the game's UI is themed around her music player. The "song select" screen is used as a level selector, and The levels correspond to their respective background music tracks. Other panels include the game's settings and help file.

UI (Pause Menu)

As an extension of the player character, the game's UI is themed around her music player. The "song select" screen is used as a level selector, and The levels correspond to their respective background music tracks. Other panels include the game's settings and help file.