A Rover Named R.E.D. is a 2.5D puzzle-platformer game where R.E.D., a reactivated rover, attempts to return to it's owner while trying to escape "The Scrapper." To get back to the inventor, R.E.D. can use it's gravity ray to lift objects and solve puzzles.
ROLE- Concept, 3D, UI, & Environment Artist
TEAM - Alex Lazimir, Ashwin Birdi, Harmit Singh
PROGRAMS- Illustrator/ Photoshop/ Unity/ Substance Painter/ Autodesk Maya
Objects that were chosen to model were based off of it's versatility and silhouette. The goal was to have a solid balance between distinct, and plain items. Plain objects such as I-beams, iron sticks and metal scrap were made to be placed in various assortments and kitbashed together to make something like a ramp or a background element. On the other hand, props like the platforms and buttons were made easy to distinguish as interactables for RED and need to stand out for the player to recognize it's function. (Or also be a unique background piece in the environment.)
With the modelling, poly count was taken into consideration, and extra faces were deleted on the object. After UV unwrapping them, I exported them as an fbx into Substance Painter and placed materials onto them.
For the UI, I looked into different styles that would fit the theme of our game. After discussing our vision for the UI and creating a light moodboard, I went into font exploration. Fallout was a huge inspiration, so a monospace font was chosen for a possible body text. In terms of pairings, a thicker bold display font often matched good with it. A few variations were chosen based off of this, and in the end Square 721 and IBM Plex Mono were picked after discussing with the group. OCR B 10 was a solid contender for body type, but didn't have font weight properties, and was therefore discarded.
Treatment of the buttons and text boxes were based on RED, and how interface would look "through it's eyes." A static like effect was put to emphasize this, and tints of cyan were used to indicate it's relation to RED (and it's cyan color scheme).
For our narrative, we had 2 main companies: "Scrapper Industries," and "Inventor Labs." Both of these related to the lore of the game, and needed branding elements to go with it. Because of this, I mocked up various logos for each and designed billboard signs accordingly based off the narrative.
Once the game designers and developer mocked up the level on Unity using the created assets, I went in and added more props and objects to the environment to make it feel more alive. I created 2D scrap piles to put in the background for more depth, created more variations of prefabs and adjusted textures accordingly depending on the environment.
Helping create this game I learnt a lot about the pipeline for game development and the process that goes into making it all. I learnt how to use the basics of Unity, and familiarized myself with the 3D workflow of modelling and texturing in Substance Painter. Out of everything though, I improved my communication skills. Within this project I had to discuss with the developer and game designers about art direction and decisions made within the game. Through this I learnt how to balance out what our priorities were given the deadlines and limited time we had.
In hindsight, one thing I could improve on though would be to step outside my comfort zone. Although I worked with Unity during this project I wish I stepped more into areas I wasn't entirely familiar with such as UI implementation, lighting, and animation.
