Introduction
I was very excited to begin this game project with the game design students. I could finally put my work into practice in a mock industry pipeline and make a cool game. At first, I was in another team before the next one, and we were at our planning stage. However, two of our teammates were moved to another project so the remaining, members including me, were scattered to other groups.
Roles
When I joined this team, everyone had their roles picked. I was assigned as an art director for this project, creating a style sheet to keep consistency in the game and approving models and designs of others, but I’ve also taken up the jobs of 3d modeler, concept artist, character designer, and animator.
Research and Mood boards
There were a couple ideas that the team already were considering when I arrived. Through a vote, we chose the idea of a first-person horror game in a toy store.
With that in mind, I created several mood boards for the style and feel of the game. I looked at the closest comparisons first, Poppy Playtime and its toy factory, Five Nights at Freddy’s, and its animatronics, and used them as references for their horror mechanics. Old victorian toys were also an interest to me as it gives an uncanny creepy effect as well as warped toys to give unique ideas for the character designs.
For the actual toy store, I looked at a few references of vibrant toy stores in art, real-life, and Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium with the magical toys being alive. I want the place to feel safe and bright.
For the art style, I thought My Little Nightmares and Tim Burton would be good references as I want it to have a creepy toy-ish look to all of its characters and scenes. I liked the usually desaturated scenes of MLN contrasted with strong color and its intense chiaroscuro lighting. Tim Burton’s characters have distinct character designs that all have a uneasy feel to them which is fitting for this game.
Art Style
For the different rooms, I drew them up along with including their references at the bottom. The toy store should feel bright compared to the other rooms, maybe a semblance of safety, with many toys scattered about. The ball pit room acts like a swamp with the crocodile toy in it, murals of vegetation and animals on the walls, and lots of greens. The collector’s room seems normal enough, with the toys on glass shelves, until the doll escapes and that sets off the alarm, creating a dangerous red glow in the room. Finally the warehouse. It has a cold, vast, and very dark atmosphere with seemingly endless shelves and hovering spotlights.
(There has been a confusion of roles and people were doing their own thing artistically. This style sheet was made after I made the doll and after getting feedback from tutors that I do not give enough guidance for the creative style of the game. This is where I took over full control of the art director role)
For the character style sheet, I went with a stylized look. Exaggerated features like the head and proportions, hair in one big shape with little strands for the ends. overall the textures are almost realistic with some black lines drawn on.
Concepts
Here is an early concept of the warehouse and store.
Character Design
When it came to character design I was very excited to go wild with the different looks. With references to the warped toys, I made my own nightmarish designs. I really liked the design of the ball jointed doll, I wanted to give her ballerina spider vibes. Her hair is in the shape of funnel-web spider legs rearing up to strike, and she has several eyes and a few other spider-like details. I also liked the idea of a tea set with spider legs being enemies as well, as they come with the doll.
This doll was from my character style sheet. I made her look more victorian styled in her clothes, with a bonnet, lace, and ribbons. I gave her creepy broken eyes and a cracked face. In the end, everyone enjoyed this design more so I continued with it.
Enemy modeling
Porcelaine Polly
I began modeling using a cylinder and subdividing it, shaping it to make the basic shape of the torso. I cut the body in half so I could make it symmetrical later to save time. I made the legs with the same method and placed spheres to act as ball joints.
I used squares to make the feet and hands, subdividing for a more accurate shape and extruding for the fingers.
I then began the head with a cylindrical plane and then shaped the eye socket, then the mouth and nose, then mirrored it. I shaped the face and extruded the sides and bridged them. After I was done, I mirrored the body and connected their faces to have one full basemesh.
I created the skirt out of a cylinder and subdivided it so I could make the ruffles and removed the top and bottom faces. I extruded the soles on the feet to create heels.
I created a chocker and then the shape of ribbon laces on a plane. I gave her sleeve puffs by extruding the shoulders, shaping them to my liking. Then I made a box at the back with planes and extruded them.
The bangs were done with a plane and I shaped them to become the fringe and hair at the back. With the same technique, I created the bonnet with a strip of wavy lace. For a final touch, I included spheres for the eyes. After that, I smoothed out all the necessary surfaces for a polished look.
Texturing
For a porcelain look, I made her pale and shiny with the roughness. I gave her some light blush all over the face. Then I painted her eyes with a lot of gnarly detail for an uncanny effect. I gave her eyeliner and dark eyeshadow, adding some circular blush on the cheeks and red lipstick with a tiny smirk. With a brush, I made her face and body look cracked with a height map and then accentuated the crevices with black. This gave a cracked porcelain look. Then for the final touches, I used sharp black lines for little details around her eyes and for the crack on one of them.
I used fabric textures on the clothing. I found some good use in masks for the color block parts of the shirt and dress and hand-painting them. I added buttons with height maps and higher roughness for a more 3d effect. For the hair, I used the wood texture and made the height maps deep for the hair effect. After that, I drew dark lines for that stylized effect.
Rigging
I tried using several methods to rig my doll, like Quick rig and manually. Much to no avail alas, as the joints wouldn’t appear in the right places or the skeleton wouldn’t bind correctly.
After many tutorials and trial and error, I still had errors. So I asked my tutor for help. He presented me with the advanced skeleton script and helped me figure out how to get the rig to function.
Skin weights
After that, I worked on the skin weights to make her mesh react how I wanted it to when animating. This was quite a fun task to figure out all the moving parts and what affects what.
Animation
I took a reference of me waving my hands while slowly walking toward the screen. I wanted a slow and creepy floating movement while staying stiff overall.
To break from the same swaying, I made her do a twirl.
For her idle animation, she’s just floating about with her arms on her lap and her legs trailing.
When she notices the character she becomes alert and flies backward with her hands on her mouth, shocked. And then flies back to the original pose. Dayna noticed that her arms were clipping as she was lowering them so I changed that.
For the jumpscare, she flies backward and shoots toward you, grabbing your face, as she stares silently while cracking her head.
For the cutscene animation, Patrick gave me the collector’s room scene from unreal, for the guidance of her interacting with the environment. She awakes and almost like possessed flies up and hovers a little before descending and then switching to alert mode to catch you.
Here is the old version.
Here is the new version. I added a lot more movement to her legs and arms as well as her whole body to make her look smoother and elegant. I also wanted her to fly out more as if she’s being pulled by the waist.
Unreal Engine 4
I imported the doll, animations, and textures to unreal engine 4. I played around with the physics and collision boxes to make her look even better. I made her dress flowy, her bow bouncy, hair as if it were floating in the wind. Then I placed all the animations in a line to see how they all react to the physics. Fixing them up according to my judgment.
When I saw them like this, I was ecstatic as they looked so cool and were ready to be implemented into the game as a functional asset.
Here is a test of her in the environment, with her animations still to be fixed on the jumpscare.
Good Bear
For the bear model, I used Dan’s character sheet as a reference and placed the image planes. I created the body out of a cube and subdivided it, shaping it to follow the reference. Then after deleting faces to make holes for the arms, more cubes were added to create the arms and I connected the sides. The legs were made the same way and then I made the foot with a cube and extruded out the toes. The head was another square that I shaped into a bear head, extruding the faces where the ears are and adding eyes with spheres. Expecting facial animation to be done, I modeled the mouth in a way it could be animated. I mirrored the body and connected the sides to create one basemesh.
After adding the buttons, I noticed that the bear looks fine in the concepts, but in 3D, the lack of neck looks goofy. I gave him a neck and checked with my teammates, and they agreed that it looked better with a neck.
For some texture, I extruded faces to create fur hairs in a stylized way. Then I smoothed him out and added string to the buttons. I UV mapped the mesh and then exported it for texturing.
Texturing
I used a plain brown texture for the body, adding some texture with brushes and drawing black stitches in different places. I scratched some more texture on the fur and lightened the ears, as well as darkened different parts to make them look worn and dirty. I made its lips all dark to make them creepier, maybe dried blood.
Feedback: The tutors suggested that I should rework the textures of the bear as it looked like he was made out of wood. So I removed the scratchiness and added a fabric material to it. I also used a brush for stitching as I believe it looks better.
I’m very glad about how good bear turned out. Now he’s being given off to be rigged and animated by James.
Crockles
The final enemy was the crocodile, designed by Daniel. I made him almost solely out of cubes, creating him in parts to show that he’s more mechanical. I made the jaw separate so it can be animated as well. I gave the jaw teeth and back spikes by extruding the faces and shaping them to be pointy.
Then I subdivided a cube and then extruded it inwards in stripes to make the metallic moveable pivots. I added the eyes and nostrils and the key on his head by extruding a plane with the shape multicutted. Then I did the UVs and exported the model to Substance Painter.
Texturing
With the croc’s texturing, I placed scale textures in green on the body and selected the square scales. I messed about with the heights and roughness until I was satisfied. Then I used a plastic material and changed it to yellow for the jaw. The same material I masked and painted on the body to be the belly. For the cylinders on the joints and the pivots, I dropped a metal material and played about with their texture until satisfied. Then I stamped bolt textures to the joints and another customized one for the jaw hinges.
Then for the inside of the jaw, I painted it red with a line for the tongue. I later painted the eyes a deranged look with red dots on the pupils to act as cameras. For the final details, I used a black line for the belly and nostrils and then brushed dirt on the body.
I am very proud of this model and its textures. He turned out better than I expected. Now it is sent to Daniel to rig and animate.
Other Models
In my style sheet, there was a stool chair in the middle of the room. So I made it in Maya. Then I UV mapped it and exported it into substance painter. Faux leather was what I was going for for the cushion part. Using a mask and another material, I gave it the effect of cracking leather. Then wood for the base and metal for the legs.
For decorations, I decided to make some banners and balloons.
Main Menu Art
For the main menu, I wanted a cold, lonely, and dark scene of our protagonist in the dark and the main villain, Porcelaine Polly, following him. For extra interest and to allow the silhouette of the doll to show up more and other toys, I painted a spotlight. For the effect of it flashing I made another version with no spotlight or highlights. This was then added into the menu and made an animated effect.
Family Photograph/ Decal
Patrick asked to have a collectible family picture. I drew it out in Photoshop as a full image and then created transparent pixels for each ripped piece. Then for decals, I made masks for the transparency. Then with all the ripped elements, I put the ripped papers together and placed tape to make it look like a child stuck them. Then Patrick and I added them into Unreal and made them into decals.
LUTs
To add some color correction to the scenes, I made several LUTs for nicer colors. I added the unreal LUTs png, color corrected the screenshots of scenes, cropped the LUTs, and sent them off to Patrick to import into the scene.
Feedback in Presentations
The overall feedback for most weeks for me was to simply continue what I was doing, with maybe some minor changes every now and then.
Other Contributions to the project
- I approved others’ designs, textures, and model ideas as an art director.
- Helped Patrick change aesthetic elements of the scenes/ lighting/ props/ camera work for some scenes.
- Gave ideas on game mechanics, like the lights switching at certain parts of the playthrough, and smoother turns for the character animations.
Reflection
I very much enjoyed working on this project, I learned so much and improved my own work to help create a working game prototype. I enjoyed working with my teammates and sharing my ideas and fulfilling my role as an art director. I am proud of my models and textures and animations as well as my teammates’ work. Having this experience gives me an idea of what the industry would be like, but on a smaller scale. This will help me prepare for the jobs to come and made me aware of the things I need to improve.