Changeling

Changeling is a VR narrative-focused experience where the player takes on the role of Aurelia, a supernatural detective who has the power to view people's fears and feelings as they see them, simply by touching them. She is tasked with investigating a family who claims their infant is acting incredibly strange.

This project is a game created by students and faculty at Rochester Institute of Technology and is in ongoing development. I joined the project for the Fall semester of 2020 as lead artist, working with the art team and interfacing with the other teams to make sure our art was being implemented, and that the other teams got the kind of art they needed.

The game is being developed in Unreal Engine for VR. I did my modeling and animation in Blender, texture work in GIMP, and worked extensively with the Unreal Engine shader editor.

As the lead of a small team, my duties were essentially to create any art assets that the other teams needed. The main tasks I accomplished were re-rigging, heavily optimising the models of, and animating the family members, designing the levels of the intro sequence and the hub level, and developing multiple shaders that emulate different styles of painting to give the game a unique look between levels.

This project was yet another great experience working in a medium sized team. Despite being a school-run project, the hours and workload was comparable to a full time job. It was a fun challenge learning to communicate between the groups, especially in hectic times such as when we were looking to submit the game to the 2020 Frameless Symposium, a showcase of humanities-inspired VR/AR/MR projects held out of RIT. I also enjoyed the chance to work on art and design for video games, a field I greatly respect.

You can find more information on Changeling at this website. There's an entire interactive web experience and a downloadable demo.