Alvin's Blog

Games Related Stuff

2009-05-26T16:26:00.000-07:00

Mūzaïc

Brief introduction on Mūzaïc and my role . Mūzaïc is a casual game that is played over the PC and on online social networks like facebook. You will take upon the role of growing and cultivating their own musical garden in order to create the ideal home for an endearing race of musical creatures known as Mūzes (the little magical creatures that play music in your garden).

Mūzaïc is an audio masterpiece that is designed to be accessible to the visually impaired and yet has to be visually appealing to sighted players at the same time. So Ms Joanne Loo and myself are the artist on the team. The biggest challenge at first, is to design the Mūzes in a way that their look and attire matches the kind of music that they are playing. Research after research , lots of sketches rejected and finally we got something that we are pretty sure would work. ( will not be showing enormous amount of sketches, but some of those which are closer to the final look. )

Once the game went on production , we are ready for conversion into the actual game sprites. It will have a vector based look because it will be a flash application on facebook.

(click on image below, click again to enlarge)

( Mūzaïc's empty and full garden )

In-game sprites without sound (below)

Animation on the game sprite is another issue when the Mūzes have to synchronize to the music and dance. The technical challenge here is to deal with the milli secs of lag when loading or playing the music. we will not get into any of that here.

( Mūzaïc is a facebook game project complete within 2 months with a team of 7 )

Labbit Escape

This is basically a revamp of old graphics using old school mechanics. Very much like playing the old 'super mario' with a countdown timer attached. Using the mechanical rabbit escapist, you are supposed to help it to clear the levels. Have worked on the game sprite and the backdrops. Flash based game.

Air Castle interactive mini game

The bigger picture of this project is to explain about daydreams and nightmares to the children. Content of the interactive CD includes : A short animation, A mini game and some information about dreaming. We have actually worked with our interactive designer Bruce Mak on the project, providing him with assets for an interactive CD. The content includes a mini game and basic information on dreaming. (below are some screenshots of the contents in the interactive CD )

(Informative content)

Animation/3D Modeling Related stuffs

2008-12-28T00:46:00.000-08:00

Property Rush

Property Rush is done sometime ago. It is actually a video opening for a 'monopoly like game'. The essence here is to try and make a interesting game opening on a game that most people will already understand. The unqiue part of this game is that it takes the context of the life in singapore. Backdrops closely modelled to the reference of singapore , while making it a stylize piece. My Job here is to texture and model some of the buildings and 2 of the characters . Was involved in the animation on the 2 characters.

(Two of the characters. a hawker, the other a cleaner)

(low polygon models of the background)

(Cover art of Property Rush )

Air Castle

Air Castle is targeted at a younger age group from pre-school and up. This would have justify the use of vibrant colours and minimum dialogue to convey the message. Air castle talks about the struggle of a little creature who try and build a daydream in mid air ( in a form of an air castle ), but is constantly interrupted by another cautious little kid.

below are some very early concepts sketches of the characters done . ( a fair bit of changes was input after this for the final animation )

(click to enlarge)
We have taken out the Dreamseed character. Initially we have been trying to get a mascot for the team , but it didn't work out. Anyway, here is the link to the video :

( Air Castle is a Interactive CD project complete within 5 months with a team of 4 )

Promotional Animation For Mūzaïc

Promotional flash based animation.

++ For a sample of my animation showreel click here

Concepts & Illustrations

2008-12-16T07:00:00.000-08:00

Graphics & Illustration

* click to enlarge

* Click to enlarge

Sketch-A-Doo

Random Sketches in my sketchbook

Digital composition and painting

The above is a transformers inspired piece. (created with photoshop and Wacom bamboo )

Trying to create a demonic warrior here. Playing with some lighting to make it really dramatic. At the end we decided to splash in a ray of cool blue emiting from the eyes, in the mist of warm colours for easy focus . There, it is done.