Who Killed The Albino Squirrel
Character concept art/design by Michelle Zhang
Project Overview:
Who Killed the Albino Squirrel is a point-and-click murder mystery game that lets you investigate the death of the campus’s beloved albino squirrel. The player will learn information and gather evidence from investigations and piece together the mystery using their learned knowledge and intuition. Players can interact with environments, characters, and events to slowly traverse the mystery.
Link to Project:
Project Goals:
To give the users a sense of choice through a directed narrative with a predetermined outcome.
To create a mounting feeling of suspicion about the direction of the narrative through red herrings, misleading information, and evidence.
To pull from UT lore environments to create a cohesive narrative that gives familiarity and relatability for players who went to/are at UT.
To create a mounting feeling of suspicion about the direction of the narrative through red herrings, misleading information, and evidence.
To pull from UT lore environments to create a cohesive narrative that gives familiarity and relatability for players who went to/are at UT.
Credits:
Mostafa Amir: Game programmer, sound designer and implementer
WKTAS Protagonist (unnamed)
The thought process behind the protagonist was keeping it simple and gender-neutral. We didn’t want to make a protagonist that would stand out too much, but we wanted to make them unique like they’ve got some odd quirks about them.
I refrained from using harsh colors that would draw attention to them, opting to use a light purple for their hair. Purple certainly is a unique color for hair, but using a lighter shade can help signify that this character is more passive and gentle.
Their clothing is meant to be very gender-neutral. While hoodies and other looser articles of clothing do give people a more ambiguous shape, I wanted them to look prim and proper, almost like a goody-two-shoes character that has a pristine record. While also not making it too tight-fitting, (the shape of the body would give them too much of an identity) I decided to stick with slacks, loafers, a vest, and a collared shirt underneath.
The colors of their clothing are muted too to adhere to their passive personality. The most striking thing about their clothing would be the dark red tie. I thought the outfit would be incomplete without an accessory around their neck.
Rendering process for the protagonist’s “neutral expression.” The process will remain more or less the same for all the other expressions drawn for this character.
Placeholder expressions used for the first prototype of the game.
Finalized portraits for various expressions for the protagonist. In game, the portraits are facing right during dialogue scenes.
From left to right (top row): Inquisitive, neutral*, sad
From left to right (bottom row): Surprised, happy, and terrified.
*Note that the neutral expression is flipped right in-game because the protagonist needed to be on the left and the other sprites needed to be on the right.
WKTAS Title Screen: Finished Product and Step-By-Step Process
Step-by-step process on the main character for the title screen. I sketched the composition of the title screen on a 1920 x 1080 canvas with 300 dpi. The protagonist has a terrified expression, as if something is causing them to be unsettled. I drew them in this manner to hopefully convey that the mystery of who killed the albino squirrel runs deeper than they could have ever expected.
Added the dead albino squirrel into the background of the title screen. I split its body up along the cracks to convey a glass shattering effect, as if the true nature of its death is more fragmented. In the third image on the right, I added some chromatic aberration for visual effect.
The finalized title screen with the title on it. I placed white and black boxes around certain letters and words as if to signify that they'd been cut out, like those anonymous letters sent to police to provoke them in movies.
Style Differences and How We Bridged Them
Because the other artist's and my styles are so different, I worked with her to bridge the inconsistencies between our art. I demoed how to create dynamic lighting using different layer modes in Clip Studio Paint. This method helps utilize the other artist's base character portraits and my line art and shading style. I also touched up her base character portraits to give a little more detail on the fur and eyes.
Link to Full Production Bible Here
