My role as a 3D Art Lead and Game Designer.

I worked on the design team and led a small 3D art and animation team in creating a prototype. I worked closely with the other designers and team leads and helped implement the props and assets in Unity. Our goal was to create a functional prototype for the school. Our team successfully created the most realized, playable, and fun demo during our year with the most development and profit potential.

I was instrumental in the pitch of the game and pushed for a collaboration with the culinary arts program. In addition, I took on the role of character artist but encouraged the 3D modelling team to also make a unique character for the game.

All “human” characters for the prototype were created to take advantage of the same rig and animations. To streamline the process, all textures were created as trim sheets and made to be modular so that every character could take advantage of the texture. Originally, we wanted to use shaders for various “cooked” assets. I found this to be the easiest way to apply a visual “Cooked” aesthetic to the dozens of foods and ingredients.

All of the props and assets, including the ingredients, were made to be modular. As a team, we broke up the ingredients, props, and assets list to be modelled and textured. I later combined the ingredients to fit types of dishes as a single model. We then created a system to allow ingredient placements on a dish, so I edited all the ingredient models to fit the plates in wholes, halves, and thirds. Assets like Soups and Spices used textures to create the needed variety.

For this project, all assets and props were created in low poly as the goal was to build a functional prototype. It also didn’t feel necessary to have the team sculpt and then retopologize due to the style of the game. In addition, shaders were meant to be used on the models. All the models were created and unwrapped in 3Ds Max. Trim sheets were made in Photoshop and kept at a low resolution due to the cartoony style.