GAME: Go-Go Karts
COMPANY: SMU Guildhall
ENGINE: Unreal Engine 4
PROJECT DURATION: 16 Weeks
DEVELOPMENT TEAM: 45 Devs
Game Designer: Len Medina
Lead Producer: Jaye Garrison-Stuber Weston-Wong
Lead Programmer: Jake Klinkert
Lead Artist: Alex Kennedy
Lead Level Designer: Taylor Roseberry, Austin Merritt
Stakeholders: Mark Nausha, Steve Stringer, Jeff Cavitt, Joowon Kim
Description:
Go-Go Karts is a 3D Arcade racer in the style of Mario Kart that was developed with a 45-person development team during a 16 week time-span.
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My Responsibilities (Artist, 1 of 14):
- Create concept art for Karts and Characters during Prototype/POCT
- Establish production pipeline with the other two character artists on the Character Sub-team
- Create all four high poly sculpts of the playable characters in ZBrush
- Create all game-res models of all playable characters in Maya
- Create textures in Photoshop
- Assist with animation
- Served as a member of the Art Strike Team* during Alpha to establish a cohesive art style
*Art Strike Team: I was hand-picked by the professors/stakeholders to create documentation that helped supplement the Art Style Guide (that was lacking significant information) for the entire art team to follow.
CONCEPT ART PHASE
One of my responsibilities was to create Character concept art for the playable characters that would be seen in-game. After our initial concepts were rejected or didn't quite fit with the worlds that the Level Designers were creating, my character sub-team and I settled on doing 8 minute concepts for each world.
These are the concepts that I came up with for each world. I really wanted to give the Game Designer and Art Lead a wide spread of options, so that nothing was left unexplored with the time we had. Since we were creating characters that would be seen from the back only, I really wanted to hone in on the importance of their silhouette(s).
For Rocky Sweettooth (Left), the Game Designer wanted the Dessertworld character to serve as the iconic "Tracer" for the game. With Rocky, I wanted to convey kind of a hoity-toity racer, who has - not necessarily all the power- but all of the power in this fictional racing world. I referenced a lot of ideation from Wreck-It Ralph's Sugar Rush, and wanted to incorporate candy and dessert into Rocky's outfit. I'm actually a little sad the original design didn't make the cut, but I was able to rebirth Rocky as the final character, Lilypop.
For Percy (right), I really wanted to try and branch out a little from my usual character types, which are mostly humanoid. This iteration of Percy was the springboard for a more anthro version of Percy that came later on. I didn't want to go with a typical "Blackbeard ARGh" pirate, and thought it would be fun to have a more mascot-esque player character.
EXTRA CONCEPTS
DEVELOPMENT PHASE [POCG - ALPHA]
During Development, I really wanted to get started on the character high poly sculpts as soon as possible, given the amount of time that we had (which was not very long overall), and also taking into consideration how much having characters (or lack of) would affect other teams, such as the Kart team, Kart Phsyics/AI, VFX, and even the sound design teams.
I started with the titular character, Lilypop during the first few days of POCG (Proof of Concept Gameplay). This was my first time doing any major character sculpting where other people were relying on me. Frankly, it was a little nerve wracking to have such a high responsibility on my, but I enjoyed those expectations.
Characters were given a budget of 10,000 across the board, which made some things very difficult.
There are quite a few things I would love to redo about Lillypop if I had the time or interest, but for the amount of time I was given - which was only three days - I think she turned out decently well for a first-timer.
We were also requested to do 8 different skins for each character, which put a little bit more stress on us. Regardless, I really enjoyed creating Skins for Lillypop, and named them based on different sweet things as a fun little bonus. I think Blueberry is my personal favorite.
After finishing Lillypop, I got started on Percy, the Pirate Parrot. Having been chosen from my original concept to represent the Pirate World in our game, he underwent a bit of a design overhaul to fit a more mascot-esque stature. This was handled by my teammate Lamesha Coley. I really entrusted Lamesha to create a more anthropomorphic version of Percy without going into Furry territory, which is what I was afraid I'd end up doing if I handled the redesign of this character (based on my style and comfort zone - I'm not a furry).
Truthfully, Percy was the nicest highpoly that I created for this game, possibly because I didn't have to adhere to traditional 'Does it look like a HUMAN?' design.
The third character I created was Freya Moon, the headliner of the Haunted World in our game. She was concepted and designed by Hector Ogando.
Thankfully, Lamesha was able to successfully rig Freya, even with her asymmetrical silhouette and we got her animated and imported into UE4 without too many hiccups.
I don't actually have too much to say about Freya, since a lot of the thought process was in Hector's domain. I simply turned her into 3D.
The fourth, and final, character that I was responsible for creating is the knight that represents the Medieval World - Emberous. This character was a combination of one of Lamesha's Concepts, and one of Hector's concepts.
For Emberous, he was the most challenging, simply because of how many pieces he had (and the low tricount we were given - 10k) as well as making sure all of his Armor would deform properly, not clip, etc. He was created towards the very end, and I will admit he had me sweating a little.
He definitely did not get a worthy treatment, but I think it was because we were in the final stages of Alpha and stress-levels were very high due to the amount of scoping issues that the other 43 devs were dealing with at the time.
All of Emberous' textures were done by Hector Ogando.
ART STRIKE TEAM
For the Art Strike Team, I was requested by faculty to be a part of this as I had a strong understanding of where the game's art direction needed to go and how to get it there. This team was created because of the lack of intent that the original Art style guide our lead had created, and was missing vital information in regards to team cohesion. This was actually one of my favorite tasks that I had, as I really enjoy documentation especially when it's to help others. In this case, this documentation was specifically to help the entire art team (Karts, Environment, and Character). The strike team document was created with two other artists, Zhiyu Sun (Karts) and Sam Harry (Environment).
TEXTURE STYLE GUIDE
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZfxXJX_Jqyd6m8P9KlTyZEhESFzPkzsrAPdsIivLGKA/edit
PROJECT POST-MORTEM
WHAT WENT WELL:
- Character Sub-team performed very well together and functioned as a cohesive unit, and not individual artists
- Communication with our sub-team specific producer, Alaetheia (Garrison-Stuber Weston-Wong)
- Meeting, and exceeding, the deadlines that were given to me and my sub-team
- Learning and adapting to rapid implementation of assets
WHAT WENT WRONG:
- Severe lack of communication from the game designer - no intent of improving, despite constant feedback from the entire team that this was an issue
- Lack of team sub-leads meant communication was a free-for-all or funneled through multiple producers - misinformation was easy
- Inconsistent decisions
- Disregard for the amount of content that was being asked of the dev team
- Lack of knowledge of what was actually happening on the developers floor from the professors
EVEN BETTER IF:
- Better leadership choices
- Cohesive decisions from the game designer and the leads team
- Better communication pipelines between all sub-teams
- More input and assistance from the professors, who have done this before as industry professionals