I had the honor of working with a couple of other game artists on a rough demo-level.  Our group was comprised of Kyle Hickey (scripting/modelling/Game Design), Dylan Rinker (Character Concept/ Character Modeler), Myself (Concept Artist / Modeler / Game Design) and Ian Spencer (Modeler).  We had a few ideas pitched, but what really hit off with the group was my suggestion that we watch Jan Švankmajer's 1966  Rakvickarna (Punch and Judy).   The working title, "Coffin Factory" is a direct reference to that short.

 The premise was that the player take the role of an current day Urban Explorer that gets into a derelict theater, then discovers that they cannot get out.  The possessed Punch doll from the theater's prop room intends to kill them, or turn them into a doll under it's control.  The game elements would be wave events with differing mechanics based on lighting effects and the theater sets from each 'Act' of the play- the character could heal if they stood in the spot light, could roam around the theater to try to outsmart the AI murder puppets, and they had to keep track of their ammunition/resource management.

It was important to the feel of our idea that items look distressed, distorted in proportions and a bit collage. 

We'd planned on three phases- The ocean, the desert, and then a boss fight.  For the first two, elaborate flats would move on stage as though there was a stage crew manipulating them for a 1700s play.  Some inspiration for these came from the 1988 The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen.  The disembodied nature of them felt appropriately disjointed and disturbing, and play-testing response was very good for the 'creepy' factor. 

Kyle did a great job keeping the master UDK file and getting assets placed in as they were finished.  With the walls and sconces, we wanted the theater to feel like it had been established in the late 1800s, then renovated in the 1930s/Deco period before closing during World War II.  The sconces and seating referenced the Art Deco, while the wall texture I made pulled from the elaborate patterning and golds/reds of classical theaters from the target building date.

The very first concept art for the level demo.  There were geometry/math issues with getting the floor slope and back lobby rotunda, and there wasn't enough time to implement the facing panels changing as well as the stage scenery.   Maybe someday in the future I'll take a crack at it independently as a modelling exercise.  I liked the creepy sun faces as mirroring Comedy and Tragedy.

This was a concept paint of the environment "Heart Chamber" where the boss would be encountered.  I was focusing on clear materials definitions for the environment artists, suggestion of propulation assets, and clarification of the red blood cell powerups and the virus mine enemies.  It was done wholly in photoshop, in about 3 hours.  Later, after I made the Cell logo text, I converted the paintup to a 'wallpaper' format as you see here. 

It happened January 25th- 27th, so I'm a little late in posting up the meaty bits associated with the efforts.  Reasons?  Doing a 48 hour event pushed a lot of things behind by about 48 hours!  After that there's been some family medical emergencies, and work that is under NDA....but I've been noodling away. 

If you every get a chance to do a GGJ, do it.  Anyone is welcome, anyone interested in game production at all.  There were even two boys, 13 and 14 I think their ages were, at the Pittsburgh location who set out to code an entirely text based team.

This concept was trying to feel out the opening menu screen and whether we wanted custom font or just to use a premade font.  We liked the effect, animated the blood cell throbbing with a heartbeat sound, and went with it.

I took on the role of Producer for an outstanding team, as well as a Concept Artist, Game Designer and Texture Artist.  Producer meant collecting files and holding meetings, being the final decider on directions discussed, keeping everyone to deadlines, and most of all keeping cool, calm and collected while encouraging team enthusiasm and health.  By the end, concept and UI work complete,  I was putting blankets over sleeping teammates and telling others when they'd been working for more than 2 hours straight to stand and have a 5 minute walk and water break.

Our Team logo, NoBrows.  It's a stylized portrait of Travis.  Apparently at some point he'd lost a bet and shaved his eyebrows as a result long prior in history.  So our team wagered him his eyebrows if we won any awards.  It became a running joke over the event, and the logo was a surprise to get him and everyone to laugh.  It worked well.  Sadly, he still has his eyebrows in real life.

Some early iterations of White Cell's design over top of a vein/artery environment concept.  With only 48 hours, I was trying to cut down by combining the environment, propulation and character on one piece.

My excellent, talented teammates were  - Amanda Wallenhorst, Jordan Jenkins, Cody Wilcoxon, Matthew Kline, Travis Kehler, Kyle Hickey, and Theresa Liddington.  This year's theme was a heartbeat, and we had decided early on that we wanted to make a side-scroller in the Unreal Development Kit.  Cue the canonball run collection adventure of White Cell, who fights to free your heart from the grip of Cardiovascular Disease. W, S, A, & D guide the character along the environment to collect red blood cell power ups, and players have to be careful to avoid the exploding viral mines.  The product came out beautifully polished for 48hours and 8 sleep deprived artists, and everyone who played it commented on that aspect. 

Our Stylized main protagonist, White Cell.  

The enemy virus mines and some indication of how they should animate to the skinning/rigging team.

We discussed wanting to maybe spend another week jam session on it as a group, figuring if we got that far in 2 days, a dedicated 7 might allow us to push in a projectile attack, some other interesting enemy variants, expand the 'boss battle' and have more than one level.  I really hope we can organize it together.  As the Producer, I suppose that will be in my court to start emailing everyone!

In the meantime, All GGJ participants upload their source files and playables to the GGJ site, and agree to released them under Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 version of the Creative Commons License. So go play our game, Cell, as well as all the other amazing 48-hour free vignettes created by this amazing event!

The base palette we decided to use as well as a prop concept in a infected and non-infected state of texture swap.

Spoiler?  WhiteCell is based on a basophil immune cell, so win or loose, he has excreted his defensive chemicals to poison/eat the enemy and perishes.  Its a glorious sacrifice to save the body and become a hero.  If he loses....poor thing gets infected.

We even had suggestion that we should have WhiteCell plushies made, with the hole in their body still there, looking cute and gore. It was great people got into the ambiance and feel so much, and really liked the style.

Some basic thumbnails for environments in the previsual development.  The plan for the game progression is NIMH labs > NIMH Labs duct work > Forest > Derelict Truck > Forest > Fitzgibbon Farm > Establish the Rose Bush Colony. 

These were a mix of Alchemy, Photoshop and traditional copic marker on graphics paper.

The lower left thumbnail actually shows the theoretical grating that the rats woudl exit out into the forest from.  This is the door that would have been impassible were it not for the help and survival of Mr. Ages and Johnathan.

The Derelict Toy Truck with the dead toymaker inside.  This is what provides the rats with their rat-sized tools and would be a beginning equipment pool and skills/learning level up station for the rats as they discovered some books here to read.

I need to study more farm houses and farm equipment.  Neither of these really takes into account barn structures.  But they do start considering the location of the rose bush on the front lawn of the property as well as showing off the tiller that later is important to Mrs. Frisby.

So I'll need to start converting these to color studies and tightening up the forms and lighting and propulation. 

A real media environment study using a limited chroma palette - it helps emphasize focus on where lighting is.  Especially for when trying to utilize rim lighting.  This was done using Prismacolour pencils, so it took some time to really lay down the thick, dark colours.  The actual piece is 9x11 inches, I think, on Graphics Marker Paper.

I'm always sad that there isn't more figural accents in modern architecture, when there are accents at all, so I wanted to utilize caryatid structures.  With all the lacing and buttressing and vaulting I was hoping to create a decadent, oppressive femininity within the environment.

Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE) hosts an annual game art & design scholarship competition for girls only called G.I.R.L. at their website.

I'd entered it a while back, and was selected as a semifinalist.  Semifinalists had to create two  pieces of concept art - one environment and one posed character that were new and inspired by a choice of one of Sony's game properties.   There was also a 500 word essay about women in the gaming industry that answers the following questions: 

Why do you want to work in the gaming industry? How can you change and improve the image of women in games?  How do you think such changes will help create games that more women will want to play? 

 Likened to a magician with a box of tricks, the modern gaming culture is a white, Anglo-Saxon protestant man. His tricks are a rich history of archetypes drawn from the range of Campbellian hero cycles from Gilgamesh to The Lord of the Rings. As traditional gender roles are ascribed, women in gaming are relegated to romantic interest, the wise old mentor woman, the less mighty then the male protagonist warrior, Magdalene or the Virgin Mother. With primarily five women to choose from for the hundreds of games released each year, it is no wonder that both female and male gamers have become bored and mostly ignore these old hat additions to any narrative. As an aspiring ‘magician’, I hope to show new roles and twists not just for female audiences, but to enrich the storytelling and awareness of all the culture of entertainment.
 Subtlety of role and character should be emphasized in much the same way as a control in an experiment. By choosing gender as the control, for example in a team-based story or performance, an audience loves or hates a character based on their actions and reactions within their environment. All male examples abound in two-man comedy: Abbot & Costello, David Spade & Chris Farley, and Beavis & Butthead. These are ready to mind examples, while concurrent female duos are lacking. ‘Partner’ situations in crime drama, which can edge into the comedic sublime, hold similar state. Watson & Holmes, Poirot & Hastings, and Martin Riggs & Roger Murtaugh of Lethal Weapon all brilliantly portrayed through the decades, admirable in their faults and triumphs. The Dame of female sleuthing, Miss Marple, has no partner associated. Rita Mae Brown’s modern mysteries give Mrs. Murphy a man and two cats. Examples of heroic, “Fantastic” Fours stand out for men as well, The Brothers Earp and Doc Holiday, the Ghostbusters, and the boys of South Park. Female groups of any number lack the same colour of character. Playboy-bunny fashion for She-Ra, Sex & the City titles itself nicely, shopping and romance for the “Charmed” Ones, and all well within insipid, ascribed gender definition. Depth does exist, but in small and singular flashes. Kouta Hirano’s Integral Hellsing and Production I.G’s Balsa of Seirei no Moribito are characters whose strength and interest within plot, and not within the five stereotypes, are noteworthy. Neither woman is overshadowed by men, or infallible. Both display consistency without instance of distressed damsel syndrome.
    The lack of development of the female antagonist and protagonist is a sign of juvenile development in the storytelling skills of the industry, and a fear of a perceived ‘risk’ in acceptance. Boredom of the audience with the existing face cards is evidence enough that the culture wants an act that doesn’t involve superfluous women. I want to show audiences new archetypes - a Suicide Queen and One-eyed Jennys.  Then audiences will see a trick they don’t know the secret to.

Spooky forest in complementary palette.

Little forest-dwelling Harvester of the glow leaves.

Was trying for some more organic, less sci-fi environment concepts.  The far left is a super-large monument/memorial type setting, something like a forgotten giant race's burial that becomes a solemn place for lesser after-comers.  The middle one is a clan-based, religious mountain peoples village.  The far right a mountain pass in a cliff region. 

16:9 aspect thumbs, Col-erase blue and copics

Near Future City Neighborhood