Role: UI Artist
Tiny Toyfare is a Tower Defense game that was made in a workshop class at the University of Central Florida. The group consisted a total of 20 people and 12 of them were artists. Our goal was to produce a game good enough to be published on steam. It was launched on steam on October 22 2017.
What I Did
I was sole UI Artist for this Project. Below is a break down of all of my assets and how it correlates to the user and the game's theme.
Menu Buttons
All of the buttons are themed around what would be associated with children and fabric. I decided to use fabric patches for the menu buttons because the menus were pieces of fabric. The patches resembled what one would find on a quilt and the buttons act a focal point. While the play could click anywhere on the patch, the button gives the user a definite spot to click for their desired action. Software used was a combination of illustrator and Photoshop.
Pop-Up Menus
All of the menus were created in Photoshop .
They resemble blankets and quit's to tie in the childhood items that could be in a kids room. The buttons would be highlighted upon hover and dull in color when selected to confirm selection however the menus will remain stationary. What I am most proud of are the textures of the cloth and the stitching on the edges.
Button Theme
Here is the basic design of the most predominantly used UI asset in the game. I was told to think of tokens or small things a child would use and I thought of buttons. I used Adobe Illustrator to make the basic colored buttons with the highlights and shadows to create a realistic button and I used photoshop to add icons.
HUD Assets
Finally, We have the HUD elements that are found during Game Play. This incorporates design and art that are found through out the game but also gauges for candy(health), fluff(currency) and Tower mode(timer). For these gauges, I thought to give them a plastic quality to them to give them a toy-like feel. The D-pad does not work like a traditional D-pad but is sort of a designated space for the player to control the space with buffs. There are four which are the Freeze(purple), Power(red), Jacks to eliminate enemy(yellow) and Shield(blue)
What I Learned
Tiny Toyfare was a collaborated effort of a group of twenty people. A group this large required an organized asset creation system that took place in stages from Conception to Polishing. I have not been apart such an elaborate system and it made production run smoothly.
It was also my first exposure to Unreal 4 Game engine and I fell in love with the software.
As the UI artist, I was majorly involved with the source control of the production. While I did struggle with it at first, I asked for help when I needed it and left the project more experienced with source control and less afraid of it.