Portfolio
Road to Valadrian is a narrative-driven 2D fantasy side scroller I've worked on with Team FireFlower. The player takes control of Lian, a young man who ends up escorting supposed princess Valaidria to the city of Valadrian after her own escort has been attacked by enemies. Throughout the game, obstacles on the road put their growing relationship to the test. Through dialogue options, the player is in complete control of the relationship between the main characters, ultimately deciding how their journey will end.
Group Project
role: 2d character & prop artist
Project Runtime
1 semester
Software Used
firealpaca, unity
During the project, I was responsible for a large chunk of the necessary 2D art, working on the characters of the game as well as many props for the environments. I also assisted with the narrative of the game, working on the branching narrative and dialogue options available to the player.
To help bring clarity to the gameplay and storyline, and to properly determine the pacing of the game, I worked on some storyboards. These were used as guidelines throughout the project to build the levels, environments, and the narrative, without any confusion about what happens when. They proved very helpful while building the art asset list and working on the necessary dialogue for the game.
In the earlier stages of the process, while we were still working on figuring out the art style, I worked on some concept art for the environmental assets of the game. This to find the right balance between realism and fantasy, and to determine the level of detail we wanted to apply.
Various assets as shown in this concept art ended up making it to the final cut of the game as well. Most of the vibrancy and saturation shown in early concept art was achieved through lighting and post processing, as some of the scenes in the game were meant to be more gloomy and dark; the assets I ended up drawing became a little bit more neutral in color because of this, to make it easier to apply lighting and post processing over them.
While designing the characters for the game, I focused heavily on showing as much as their personality in their design. I used their main personality traits to determine pose and posture; Lian is built more sturdy as he is strong and practical, whereas Valaidria has a more closed off stance due to being a little wary at especially the start of the game. She has longer legs, to highlight her elegance.
Lian's clothing is practical and neutral in color, making it easier for him to blend in with the surroundings of the forest. This fits his backstory, since these are the surroundings he grew up in. Valaidria's clothing is lighter and brighter in color, with more expensive and well put together materials, highlighting her royalty status.
The characters were animated in Unity itself, using one of the tools available. Making the rig and animating the characters by hand was a challenge for me, considering I have never had to do that like this before. Still, I think the animations turned out nice for a first try, and I tweaked them several times during the process to make sure they'd look as natural as possible.
In addition to the main characters, I also drew up some sprites for the villagers Lian and Valaidria encounter on their journey. The characters in the game also have larger sprites with various facial expressions, which show up during dialogue. I haven't included all of the variations since I had to draw a lot, but the selection shown on the right should give you a good idea of what the dialogue scenes would look like.
To bring the environment to life, I worked on the environmental assets together with one other artist. I was tasked with various smaller assets such as bushes and grass, as well as flowers, mushrooms, special night assets, assets for in the village, rocks, houses, ruins, and so on. The assets shown on the right are a good selection of what I ended up drawing, though there are more in the game than what's shown here.
Despite being a character artist, I did enjoy working on the environmental assets a lot. Especially the smaller assets such as the grass patches and rocks were very therapeutic to work on, in between all the more stressful tasks such as putting the level blockouts and final layouts together and animating the characters. I'd love to do more art like this for future projects, it was very fun to see it all come to life while working on the level design!
In addition to the concept art and assets I've drawn for this game, I have also worked on some additional art as shown on the right. Most notably I've worked on the three final slides of the game, which are shown after the gameplay is over and they summarize what happens to the main characters after the events of the game. I've also worked on the map that shows between scenes, showing the player the journey the main characters make; and lastly, I've drawn a promotional poster which was used during showcases and presentations.
I've included some screenshots of several levels of the game, to show you how the environments ended up coming together. You can see a mix of my art as well as the art of the other artist (mainly the ground and trees, as well as the distant mountains and rivers). I've worked on most of the level blockouts and then also assisted with putting together the final layout of some of the levels; the lighting and post processing has all been handled by the other artist.
This project has taught me a lot about how to realistically manage a large workload. I had to draw a lot of assets and jumped in where necessary regularly, which sometimes caused me to have a bit too much on my plate at once; but overall, I handled it all very well and managed to finish my tasks. I'm very happy with the end result and the levels look very pretty; for a future iteration I'd definitely draw a lot more assets to bring just a little more variation to the levels, but obviously due to time restrictions we weren't able to just keep going forever.
