Portfolio
Back Before Dark is a 3D first person exploration horror game, which I created with five other designers. The game is about a young boy who goes camping with his mother, but ends up injuring himself by accident after wandering off the path following a butterfly. He wakes up in the middle of the night somewhere in the woods, with monsters lurking around every corner. He has to find his way back to the campsite without getting caught.
Group Project
role: lead 2d artist
Project Runtime
2 months
Software Used
firealpaca, maya, unity
During this project, I took on the role of lead 2D artist. After putting the concept together as a team, I mainly worked on a bunch of concept art to help bring the project to life. Later in the project, I also worked on a 3D model and I assisted with creating the environment's lighting in the game engine. Lastly, I created all the required art assets for the animatic cutscenes of the game.
The earliest concept art for the game shows the little boy with his teddy bear, the butterfly, and a monster; we eventually ended up tweaking the monster design for accuracy.
These two pieces tell the story of the game. The first picture is what the boy goes through; he follows the butterfly back to the campsite with monsters all around. The player is led to believe this is the child's fantasy creating a horror environment around him. At the end of the game it turns out the boy has actually died in his fall, and the monsters are all just people of a search party looking for him (hence the tweaked monster design; the monster as seen in the early concept art does not resemble a human at all).
The character concept art shows the boy (aka the main character), the mother, the monster, and the police officer. The first monster design was our initial design; the second one resembles the police officer more. This design adjustment was implemented because we wanted the monsters to resemble the officers searching for the boy; the lights on the monster are the officers' flashlights and reflective badges in real life.
Playing with color was very important to me during this phase. I wanted to create a contrast between the environment (blues and purples, mysterious) and the characters; the boy wears a bright coat, the mother wears a light dress, and the police officer carries a light with him, which also causes the badges on his coat and hat to reflect light (making him stand out of the environment more). As mentioned above, this also reflects in the design of the monster.
The game takes place in a national forest in Canada. Early in on the project, I created some environmental concept art based on the Canadian woods to create realistic guidelines for the 3D assets. Due to lack of time, we ended up using free assets from Unity's Asset Store instead of creating our own, so my vision for the environmental assets has not been fully implemented in the game.
Last, some sketches that tell the story of the boy. The three colored sketches show what happens to him in the opening cutscene of the game; the three black and white sketches show what he thinks happens after, when he wakes up, but in reality he's already a ghost at this point.
This project has taught me a lot about creating valuable concept art; every piece I've made has had its purpose in our process and I've had the opportunity to practice with colors and contrast.
