Max van der Laan
and his site
BushyBlade
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3D sword fighting game in the spirit of PS1 classic game Bushido Blade
Unreal engine 4
Position
Art director | Illustrator | Lead 3D modeler | Character designer | Technical artist | 3D Animator
When the project started there was 2 other 3D modellers along myself. I was assigned to be the art director due to my artistic/3D modelling skills. After this the two other 3D modellers left to project to start their own, leaving me to be the sole artist this project had. It was time to one up my technical skills as a artist. During character designing I drew ideas and modified it based on opinions from my fellow workers. After that I started 3D model them to life. I wanted to further perfect the cartoon look, It took a lot of effort, pre-planning and pre-work I didn't expect before it was too late.
To get a proper control over the look I wanted, I'd would have had to compile the engine with the added edits and code for how the lighting worked. Which was too late to apply by the time I came to the realization, the coders were too far with their work to risk it with the new compiled engine. I managed to salvage the situation and coded a different calculation method for the light. I am not a coder but I managed to make it look close to the intended way.
As for the character models and rigs, I prepared the rig accordingly for the physics the characters would have. I wanted the characters to have parts that could glide along the winds to make the characters more lively. But like I said before I'm not a coder, so I had to use what the engine had for ready use. I made apex files and extra bones for the characters.
Animation was done in blender because I was most familiar with it. Animating was a difficult task due to designer's requirements, he wanted absolute realistic motions. BushyBlade was a sword fighting game, that would use realistic sword fighting techniques for its attacks for authentic tension. Designer and me filmed move sets for attacks and steps and I then animated the characters based on them. We didn't have a mocap equipment so I had to do it by hand. But probably should have tried to build a makeshift mocap studio anyway now that I'm reflecting on this.
As what I think about working on this project, it was a immense learning experience. It was nice to have such a big responsibility, but I had this dread looming as I was the only artist on this big 3D production. We did get an extra artist for the last few months, but she was new to the 3D and her work progress was slow. But I got to try and experiment which was great.
Revenge of the Kage
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Ninja character action game with co-op multiplayer in mind
Unity engine
Position
Co-art director | Illustrator | 3D modeler | co-character designer
I had no 3D skills. When I joined this project, I was expecting to be doing just illustrations and all the 2D content. There was only 2 artists on the team, and this was a ambitious 3D project. Due to my already existing skills with drawing, I was put to design, conjure ideas and concept draw the characters. After that I was then tasked to make the characters in 3D too. Confidently I took it on because how hard can it be anyway. Quickly our producer then acquired a 3rd 3D artist, experienced 3D artist was then put to make structures and the 2nd artist to make UI content.
In this short 4 month period we had, I created 2 player characters, 2 enemy characters, 1 boss character and 4 structures. We used a outside program to rig and animate our characters called Mixamo 3D due to lack of time. It was a true crunch pressure to learn 3D as I made characters, and the progression in skill can be seen in the characters. Character illustrations and the textbox I did all in one day and it shows on some of them, its all just a haze.
This project taught me a lot, mostly about 3D but also about the speed of making games. I left the team after the project ended during summer, but when the school started the team continued it. By that time I was already in another project. Despite the crunch time that ate 4 months of my life, I have fond memories of working for this project and its team.
SkyRunner
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Cyberpunk run 'n gun with mission based structure and loot
Game Maker studio
Position
Co-art director | Illustrator | Environment artist
A friend of mine approached me for advice and ideas how the environment could look. After those talks I decided to join his small game project as an background artist, I felt at the time I needed training and this was a good chance to do just that.
Unnamed 3D Touhou fan game
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3D platformer game based on the world and characters by ZUN
Unity engine
Position
Game designer | Game art | Programming | Audio
I started this small game project when I started to study at Taitotalo for coding skills. I kept adding in different functions and controls to the as I learned new coding tricks and methods, this game has become a testing ground of some sort for what I've learned. I opted to make low poly models for this as I created this game for my programming training anyway. I'll be working on this during my free time whenever I feel like trying something out.
Shroomboy
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2D Top-down puzzle game
Unity engine
Position
Puzzle designer | Enviorment designer | Programming
This one of the 1st group projects at the programming school I was at. I was assigned to be a programmer but our assigned game director saw me fit to design the tutorial and puzzles.
The game was a puzzle game from the a top-down perspective. Our hero Shroomboy had the power to change time to past, present and to future. Changing time changed the environment for example boxes were broken in the future and they are trees in the past. Our hero would have to navigate the terrain with time monsters in it safely. I was put to program object logic which on how they interact with the environment, for example like box pushing, locked doors and collectables.
It was kinda difficult as it is to be expected but I managed to code what was needed and had time to help others when needed.
Tohvelipossu: pannusta pataan
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A commissioned game in style of flappy bird
Unity engine
Released
Google play store link here
Position
Co-Game designer | Game art | Programming | Audio
After 1 year in the programming school, a friend approached me with a small deal. He was producing a small series on the internet called Tohvelipossu and he wanted a small video game for the series. I of course inquired more, he originally wanted a top-down horde shooting game with changing levels and weapons for mobile phones. I talked to him about how much time I could afford and when, I was only able to afford him 1 weeks for this project as I didn't want to work in this while doing my studies. After informing about it we had a talk what kind of game could be done in just one week. We ended up with a flappy bird type game with a little more actions to do.
When the time came to make the game, I wasn't sure if I could actually make it in time as I had to create all of art, code, game design and almost audio all by myself. It was a immense task but I took it as a challenge to test myself and my chops.
Though in the end I didn't make it fully, I managed to make the game but without the final graphics and audio. Almost all of the graphics at that time were placeholder graphics and you couldn't build it to mobile phones, I was able to make a build for PC. But as I promised to my friend who was paying for the game, I then continued making the game alongside with studying. My friend gave me the soundtrack and sound effects from his series to use for the game so I didn't at least have to learn to compose music.
The biggest hurdle for me with this project was making a build for the Google play app store. It took almost 2 weeks to figure out the issues. But I persevered and got the game in, it is available right now at Google play store. Even though this game shows its very rushed production, it still shows the touch of fun I placed on it and I feel accomplished for being able to push out a game to app store like that 1st time.
3D Bomberman type game
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Small group project to create an open area bomberman game
Unity engine
Position
Lead-programming | Audio
This was the last school project at Taitotalo and I was just a programmer at 1st and then over time I became a lead-programmer. As I had the most programming skills in the team I was made to create the player controls and camera for the game. Then after one of our coders were having issues with time and wanting to code something server related stuff for its school finals, his responsibility to create the enemies was given to me. Then another coder was having issues with objects and bomb and it was then when I had to help. And then again a coder had issues with time and couldn't program etc. This continued till almost all of the game was done and I've done almost all of it. only things that weren't done by me were the scoring, leader boards and the main menu.
My highlight work in this one though was how the controls were changeable on the fly, and this was with a camera that had mouse look.