Prototypes

Burnout Crusaders

Burnout Crusaders cover art.

This top down action game was made as part of an independent study with my college professor, Moaw. It's the first game I've made in GMS2!The small project is meant to be a showcase of my capabilities as a developer.All assets were made by me.

Prototypes

ZERO

This game was initially meant for a game jam. This is the second game I've made in GMS2! All assets, excluding character voices were made by me.The jam's theme was "Borrowed Time", so the core concept of ZERO revolves around an on-hit timer reduction. When it reaches 0... it's game over!The game is currently unfinished, though I intend to polish it up in the future. When the time comes, I'll provide a download link!(Credit to Ken Serato and Lea Lawson for their lovely voicelines!)

Pixel art

Sprite Process - "Hash" and "Vestia"

A while ago, I made sprite art of several of my own characters... including these two!Just by taking a look at them, you can immediately tell what their vibes are. One's serious, and the other very much so isn't. Both of them share sharp shape language... though Hash has this lone wolf edge to him that Vestia ironically lacks.Conveying their personalities at such a low resolution wasn't as easy as you'd think, however.

My process varies, though I typically rough out pose concepts when creating new base sprites. Here you can see some of the ideas that I went through before settling on the final poses for each character.Hash's concept sketches were extremely easy to make given his laid back nature. I tend to enjoy illustrating characters like him the most since the posing can feel so satisfying to nail. (You almost feel half as cool as those characters tend to be...)Vestia has more overall detail than Hash in her sketches since I really struggled to achieve what I was going for. With characters like her, the body language in key poses is crucial for conveying the type of animal that they are... so I wanted to go for posing that screamed "messy wolf."

... As you can see, I went through many iterations for both characters' sprites... though I surprisingly struggled with Vestia's the least. Part of this could've been because of the fact that I directly pasted in the concept sketch that I went with for her. This also isn't even my first Vestia sprite. I've animated her alongside many other characters before!The biggest hurdle with converting both of these pointed characters into such a low resolution was definitely preserving their shape language. There were so many points where I'd repeatedly redo certain parts just to make sure I could properly convey my intent.

Sprite Animation Process - "Half"

Half is one of my partner's characters. She and Vestia both come from the same story! She's essentially this really bitter war guard that wants nothing more than to be the strongest.Recently, I've been in the process of animating her for a personal project. Throughout my time doing so, my partner had personally asked me if I could come up with a new outfit for the character.

During the conceptual phase, I did my best to push Half's appeal as much as I could while also keeping her new design simple enough for low resolution animation. As an artist, the needs of the client are priority above all else... so I was actively sharing my process and asking questions at every turn.It was around this time that I also began sketching pose ideas for her animations. Similarly to her redesign, I kept my partner updated on each pose to ensure that they were all accurate.

Before I could even really start anything, I made simple turnaround animations to use as reference. While I don't typically copy from these directly, they moreso act as a general guide on how a character's details look at different angles.With pixel art animation, I follow a very traditional method where I build off of solid shapes to form the character. It's extremely useful when it comes to quickly executing ideas!For more examples of my pixel art, head here!

High res art

Concept Sketches - "Chloe"

Quite some time ago, I revisited a very old character design of mine for a fighting game that I'm working on. You can see that, even back then, a large part of her appeal was in the hair.I really liked the ghostly theming paired with her distinct hairstyle, so I decided to push that more. Instead of straight hair, she now has these thick dreads that extend down longer.This simple change further exaggerates her silhouette and makes her read more as a living ghost rather than a person with powers. To drive the point home even further, I chained her legs to a coffin that harbors spiritual energy.

Here, we have a compilation of a bunch of different sketches I made of the character. When drawing expressions, I usually try my best to figure out how to convey as much as I possibly can about who the character really is.Unfortunately, properly conveying emotion isn't one of those things that you can just do on a whim. There's a lot of thought that goes behind getting a character's sense of self right. This especially applies to animation, where even the slightest posing difference can convey a lot of differences.

Usually, my concept sketches for animation look something like this. They aren't super detailed, but they're functional. That's the only thing that really matters.As an artist, you have to be able to convey appeal at its simplest form if you crave efficiency. Simplification is a superpower!

Concept Sketches - "Onlooker"

Long before Chloe was brought back from the dead, I decided to give one of my other characters a dramatic makeover.He honestly never really had much of a distinct look for himself prior to these sketches... so I consider this the true start of conceptualizing his design.The idea randomly came to me one day. "Evil plague doctor" lingered in my head until I put pen to paper. As time went on, I continued iterating on my ideas...

Without going into too much detail, technology runs rampant in the story this guy's from, and he's supposed to be the main villian... so I thought it'd be cool to really push those elements in his design.

He's essentially an evil vibe coder. That's part of the reason why he has 5 fingers... (Besides the fact that it's offputting.)

He possesses many wires. Some of which are his own hair... while others gush out of his back while dancing with the morphing black ooze that bleeds into his cloak. If you ask me, it's fun body horror.

My partner surprised me with a custom made figure of him for Christmas! I was pleasantly surprised to see how well my design decisions translate into 3D.For more examples of my digital art, head here!