Scarf Cats
Roles: Art Lead, Lighting, Technical Artist
Platform: Windows, Mac
Scarf Cats is a colorful and relaxing cooperative adventure game where you play as two cats bound together by a scarf. Traverse a vibrant world full of puzzles and obstacles as you work together to reach the top of the mountain.
Scarf Cats was developed in spring of 2019 over the course of 15 weeks by a team of 10 students, in which my role was art lead and technical artist. It won the Best in Show and People's Choice awards at the MSU GameDev 2019 Student Game Showcase. My contributions to the project include the art direction and concept art, character art and rigs, lighting, post-processing, optimizations, and some visual effects.
Contributions
Art direction, planning and leadership
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Contributed heavily to decisions on aesthetic and theme of the game.
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Drafted initial concept art, assembled mood boards, and modeled benchmark props in early planning stages.
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Tailored our art direction and workflow to fit the specific skills of our team.
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Ensured consistent art style across the project.
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Gave regular progress reports and pitches on behalf of the art team.
Lighting, post-processing and VFX
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Implemented lighting and post-processing in Unity to match desired color and mood for the environment.
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Began with test lighting mock-ups and iteratively refined them over the course of the project.
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Worked with another artist to create a variety of particle effects for the project, such as knitting, yarn tearing, water splashing and sparkles.
Characters, from original concept to rigging
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Designed characters to fit in with our low-poly aesthetic and northern European influences, iterating on the concept in response to feedback.
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Used color and shape language to clearly distinguish the characters from each other and emphasize their individual abilities in the game.
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Modeled in Maya, textured in Substance Painter.
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Created skeletons and skinned the models before turning them over to another artist to add controls and animations.
