Last Broadcast (2023)
Role: Technical Artist - Environment, Lighting, Tools
Platform: Windows, Mac
Summary:
25 People | 9 Months
Last Broadcast is a 3D narrative game set in a small radio station at the end of the world. Players assume the role of D-Jay, a charismatic radio host who is giving their last show as the sun turns red and the world burns around them.
As a Technical Artist, I used the Unity Engine's lighting tools and Shader Graph, and VFX Graph in conjunction with writing my own tools to make the Narrative beats defined by our Art and Narrative teams possible.
You can see my work in the dynamic sky system, destructible mesh system, interior lighting and particles, character impairment system, and earthquake effect.
This work was done as a volunteer on an MFA project at the USC Interactive Media and Game Design Master's program. Download and play on Steam and Itch.io!
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My Creative Director Tasked me with the following:
Create a cozy, Firewatch-like atmosphere in unity
Create a dynamic skybox and sun that changes size
Create an earthquake sripted event and accompanying effects
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Post-Processing volume, Bloom, Blur, vignette, chromatic aberration
Create a procedural skybox shader in Shadergraph, Expose variables for color gradient, Sun Size, and Sun Position
VFX Graph Smoke and Heat Haze, “Quick-Switch” breakable mesh roof
This Skybox Shader was made with Unity Shadergraph. It has inputs to determine the appearance of the sky, horizon, stars, sun size, color & direction, and cloud color, movement & height. We needed the skybox to be able to shift colors during runtime because the game is divided into different acts with different narrative beats, so we wanted to be able to change the sky beat by beat rather than force a day/night system. It was also important that the Skybox be able to change on-screen since the player is relegated to the 4 rooms of the radio station as they interact with callers to progress the narrative, it's important to give them as much visual stimulus as possible.
The color change works by scrolling through a gradient value for both the sky and the horizon with a float clamped from 0 to 1. The number of skies is tracked by an Enum in a script, and the change can be called through a public function from the GameManager that lerps through the gradient to reach the position specified by the Enum value. This allows us to have as many different sky variations as needed!
Scene lighting consists of a combination of static spotlights and emissive materials to get the lampshade and neon appearance. The post-processing effects applied on the local volume are a faint orange Vignette, Bloom, ACES Tonemapping, Bokeh Depth of Field, and a slight increase in Saturation and White Balance Temperature. The design and narrative teams wanted the lighting to emphasize the comfort and quietness of the radio station, but also bring out the intensity of the colors during the apocalypse outside.
Bomb Buddies (2023)
Role: Art Producer, Technical Artist - UI
Platform: iOS
Summary:
40 People | 7 Months
Bomb Buddies is a 2-player cooperative AR mobile party game, where the player must win a series of fast-paced micro-games to prevent a hacker from dropping a major “bomb” and destroying their reputation.
As Art Director, I helped the Director develop the visual style for the game, tailoring it for mobile devices. I created a pipeline for art asset creation from ideation to implementation, and managed a team of 7 artists.
As a Tech Artist, I created and implemented a variety of UI assets, materials, and shaders for the 3D/AR mini-games including an infinite scrolling background, interactive timer, halftone burning fuse, and a dialogue-based 2D animation state manager.
This project was developed as part of the Advanced Game Project capstone at the USC Interactive Media and Game Design program and is available now on the iOS App store!
As Art director/producer, I lead a team of 7 artists, specializing in 2D, 3D, and UI design to create and implement art assets each sprint. We operated in a scrum framework where I facilitated Tri-weekly art team stand-ups and ultimately successfully implemented 5-10 refined assets per sprint, in pace to meet our project milestones and faculty reviews. By the end of production, the art team had completed 330 out of 338 assigned tasks, a completion rate of 97%!
As a technical artist, my duties included, creating materials and shaders with Shadergraph, and creating systems that minimized the work needed to import and implement assets into the game. I would also be the first responder when graphic bugs appeared. I advised the director on utilizing Unity’s systems to execute her vision and established the art pipeline and file directory structure for the game.