While waiting for the concept artists, I decided to make a female base character to help me streamline my modeling process.This was my first time creating a base, and it taught me that I need to practice my anatomy a bit more, but overall this was a good first start.

Using the base model I made during pre-production was super helpful since I didn't have to start from scratch while creating these models.The most challenging part while making Jane was modeling her facial features and creating her hair. I actually had to redo her whole head and follow YouTube tutorials to learn how to make hair strands. I also used those same hair strands to make her eyebrows as well.Since I kept my poly count low and I wanted a smoother look, I just turned on Auto Smooth and let it work its magic.

Concept art by Niko Agard

To save space on my UV maps, I decided to stack identical maps so I can get the most details for my models while keeping my texture file small.

References was my best friend during this stage, and saving multiple versions was a nice fallback in case I needed to go back. I only had concept art for the humanoid monster, and for the others I needed to resort to stock images and my imagination.For this whole process I used Blender 4.2. I wanted to challenge myself and sculpt these models and make them look realistic. The grab tool and the smooth tool were my most used brushes while sculpting, and I used alpha brushes to get those smaller details that make everything pop.

Concept art by Emily Lenahan

Baking textures was not as bad as I thought, and it was interesting to see flat areas look like bumpy and gross when in reality they're not.Since the game is a bunch of meat and slime, I decided to give a slime-like texture to all my models. But only to the areas that would seem to have the most contact in those slime-infested areas.Once I was done with my models, I sent them off, and my job was ultimately done.

For the first week, I was designing different iterations of bio engineered plants and 'humans.' I took inspiration from Plants vs. Zombies, Atomicrops, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and Fusion Fall.I made small notes of each design so my team understands why I made certain choices.

Making cabbages with teeth was interesting to create. I ended up focusing on making one and just duplicated the other two in the end. All three share the same UV for optimization and to save time.Creating one of the NPCs was pretty easy considering that we had another 3D artist and we modeled the NPC from his base model. I just tweaked it a bit and added the defining features.While the NPC was flat-colored because of time constraints, I created vibrant hand-painted textures using Procreate.

Both models were made in Cinema 4D.

I wanted to challenge myself by creating a looping idle animation of the 'Cabites' biting when the player comes close.Instead of using bones and weight painting them, I used shape morph and deformers to create that squash and stretch and biting.On top of that, I gave each of the crops a slight delay and a slight exaggeration to create the feeling that although they are one crop, they each have a mind of their own.

Since the shaders in the game won't allow for such detailed models, I decided to compensate by creating highly saturated characters to balance out the orange terrain.By using Clip Studio Paint, I decided to use complementary colors and an analogous color scheme throughout all character portraits and only made the player front-facing so the audience feels connected with the character.

We decided for the game to take place in the subway station based on the 70s in New York City. We took inspiration from games like Streets of Rage, Urban Warriors, and Bungo Bash.Based on these details, I went on a deep dive researching details in this time period, such as economic development, fashion, movements, what was popular back then, etc.The most important part of this stage is understanding why graffiti played an important role in this time period and what styles they used. People tag public items to symbolize youth culture and resilience. But gangs used graffiti as a way to claim their territory and create visual boundaries in the city. Which is why our game was created.

I wanted to challenge myself by using Maya to create my models for this game. I was learning Maya in one of my other classes, so I wanted to get my practice in and use it for my senior project.We wanted a PSX style for Graffiti War, so I made a very low-poly character base, which I used for all characters in the game because of time constraints.As for the textures, I used Procreate and used lots of gritty brushstrokes and saturated colors to show depth despite the low-poly models.

For this game we need 5 full-screen UI designs: a startup menu, a pause menu with a list of combos the player was able to do, a game over screen, and a win screen.I used Clip Studio Paint to create all the assets and implemented them into Unity in separate layers so the buttons can be interactive.Since the in-game shaders wouldn't have any effect on pre-rendered images, I had to add an overlay effect so we can keep the PSX theme.

The win screen is see-through because it shows the player's graffiti when they win.

Behind each successful itch.io game will always have a well-thought-out landing page, which is what my professor told my team. I decided to bring the theme of the game and match it with its landing page.A graffiti-like title that resembles the iconic subway station banner, grunge-like subway tiles for the background, and big CTR TVs that display gameplay in the game were used in the subway stations at that time along with its VCR tapes.

The win screen is see-through because it shows the player's graffiti when they win.