This quarter for CS 199, I worked on “space game” with Butch, Leyth, Ngoc, and Lucas. We started from scratch with ideation over winter break and week 1-2, and then jumped into developing the storyline, characters, and game mechanics in the weeks after.
I primarily worked on the art for the game, and started off with mocking up concepts for the characters and the world.
[Our concept moodboard.]
[Creating a color palette (with example doodles to help land on a style).]
[Image of my initial character designs.]
We played around with 2D and 2.5D to begin, but eventually pivoted to 3D for consistency and ease of programming in Unity. This was a big pivot for me because I wasn’t super familiar with Blender and I really wanted to contribute to the team’s progress. At first that was intimidating, but it also pushed me to experiment more and become more comfortable with learning by doing.
[Images of the 2.5D and. 3D characters.]
Ngoc and I worked a lot on figuring out how to animate in Blender and how to upload animations to Unity. This was my first time doing any kind of animation, so it took longer than expected, but it was really cool to see the tools and resources for animation. We initially hoped auto-rigging with Adobe Mixamo would make the process easier, but ultimately we had to pivot and rig the characters ourselves. Even though it added more work, I think the trial and error was worth it because it helped us better understand the process and get cleaner animations for our main characters.
[Image of the animated blob character dying.]
One thing I learned very quickly about 3D modeling is that it takes an incredible amount of time to make even one singular asset. Especially because I was just starting out, it sometimes felt demotivating to only have one or two new assets to share each week. I think a sense of progress is really important for me, so this project made me think more about how to break larger creative goals into smaller milestones. Next quarter, I want to think more intentionally about how to structure work in a way that keeps working on the game feeling fulfilling rather than overwhelming. I also want to flesh out the storyline more, since I think having a stronger narrative helps everyone better understand the bigger picture of what they are building toward.
[Images of the spawn points and enemies. “The evil triangles are attacking the blobs!!”]
I also created UI elements for the game, specifically for our spaceship inventory view. This was really exciting because drawing characters is one thing, but designing the UI panels and inventory system made the game feel more real, and helped me see how the player would actually interact with the world we were building. Working on those interface elements made everything start to come to life in a different way, and it made me more aware of how important visual design is in shaping the overall experience of a game.
[Image of some of the spaceship UI elements.]
Overall, through this process, I’ve also realized that you don’t need creativity to strike to do creative work! I think creatives often feel like we need some kind of spark to get going in making art but I think what I found throughout this process of weekly check-ins is that just forcing yourself to find new sources/look at your work everyday is actually so helpful to generating ideas and getting inspiration.
