DREAMWILLOW

Art Director, Lead Artist, Animator

About

  • Developed in Unity
  • Developed by a 30 person student team called WolverineSoft Studio
  • 3 months of development time (September to December 2019)
  • Agile workflow with 2-week sprints carried out through Jira

DREAMWILLOW is a 2D top down twin-stick shooter. The player is a necromancer who travels through a dangerous forest, taking down enemies and resurrecting them as companions who help engage in combat along the way.

Roles

  • Creating and assigning Jira issues to a team of 9 artists.
  • Determining art workflows and style guides, and outlining them in Confluence documentation.
  • Offering and facilitating critique and iteration of student art assets.
  • Creating major art pieces, including tile sets and promotional illustrations.
  • Creating and hooking up animations through Unity's 2D animation package.

Contributions

Tileset

  • Vector art created through Adobe Illustrator.
  • Color palette chosen to be reminiscent of an enchanted forest.
  • Roughly 40 tiles total, including trees, water, grass, and decorative tiles.

Main Menu Art

  • Digitally painted in Paint Tool Sai and Adobe Photoshop.
  • Used atmospheric perspective to capture dreamy tone.
  • Features an environment similar to the one found in-game.

Main Character Sprites

  • Translating art team character concept sketches into 2D digital vector sprites.
  • Vector art created through Adobe Illustrator.
  • Making slight modifications to designs and deciding color palettes for each character.

Cover Art Creation & Iteration

  • Experimenting and addressing feedback after creating multiple rough drafts.
  • Decided on a still shot of the main character to convey the importance of their magic.
  • Creating a final version of the cover art through Paint Tool SAI and Adobe Photoshop.
  • Creating multiple different aspect ratios of the cover art.

Animation

  • Utilizing the 12 principles of animation to create fluid and natural movement.
  • Animating Companion characters in 3 directions (horizontal, forward, and backward).
  • Using Unity's 2D Animation Package to rig and animate 2D sprites in-editor.