Updates + Summer Plans

It seems that it's been about a month since I last posted. Well, anyway, here's what I've been up to.

Updates

First off, I'm still creating art for the Higgins Armory Virtual Joust project along with Alfreda Smith. In March I refined and created some UI elements for the game. This included altering the existing art for the "heraldry creator" as well as creating heraldic emblems. I also created a prototype logo for the game which will be polished in the near future.

This past month I worked on creating 2D audience members to populate the stands with Freda. I did this by digitally painting sketches of cartoony people I drew and scanned into Photoshop. The people were then arranged together and placed on planes with transparency. When these planes are stuck in the environment, they'll give the game more depth and detail. Moving forward we'll be working on polishing existing aspects of the game.

Another project that I've been working on this term is a small Flash game for the WPI Game Development Club's Development Team. I didn't participate in C-term for various reasons but I made a point to help make something in D-term. The GDC Dev Teams don't have the best track record for putting out games or keeping projects alive (something I experienced last year), so I tried to keep it going this time. Luckily, the team picked one of my game ideas allowing me to work as a designer instead of just an artist.

Our game is called Building Bashers. It's a beat-em-up game where you control transformed robotic buildings and fight other robotic buildings, causing much chaos and destruction. Other than providing the idea I created a design doc at the start of the term, created some art assets, and even did some coding towards the end (menus and particles). We used flixel and various art tools to create the game; Andy Wolff was our programmer, Joey Chipman made player/boss and robot enemies, Dillon Lankenau made menu screens and some enemies, Graham Leto was our project manager and also made sounds, and I created a player and enemy robot, some GUI stuff, and particles. As with most small game projects, we didn't get to implement everything we wanted to but we have a playable game we can show off. You can try it out here!

Summer Plans

So, school is officially over and I'm going to be graduating in less than a week. That means I need to get an actual job now! I feel that I have most of the skills needed to get a job but I don't have enough to show off my skills. That said, my plans for the summer are to make some nice pieces of art and games to showcase in my portfolio and then start applying for jobs. This includes fixing up my resume, tweaking my website, and looking for places to apply. My goal is to start applying by July, which gives me about 2 months to get my act together. I also plan to update my blog more frequently with art, games, and whatever else I work on so stay tuned!