One Cold Evening

One Cold Evening is a “Druidpunk” mystery game in which you have to solve the mystery of why the first sun of spring won’t rise on a sleepy forest town.

One Cold Evening was the capstone project for my Game Art and Animation degree from Northeastern University. Myself and a team of three fellow students worked over the course of two semesters to develop from base concept to a final game. While everyone had input on every part of the game through our weekly sprint meetings, officially I was the art lead and so was in charge of developing our main character Nivera, the “monster” that stalked the woods of the town, as well as a few side NPC’s that helped Nivera in her investigation.

We opted for a low-poly style, both because we thought it could be visually compelling if done right and because it would be easier to achieve the scope that we wanted with the time and resources that we had.

This was a big learning opportunity for me because it was the first time I had done character models instead of just environment work. I learned a lot as I went and was able to take knowledge I had learned later in the project and reapply it to touch up some things from the models from the first semester.

Our production cycle started with Nivera, our intrepid detective. We used her general proportions to make a base mesh for all the other characters and from there layered on clothes and hair.

Val the innkeeper was the first npc that players would meet upon entering the town. We tried combining the aesthetics of both a fantasy tavern and a 1930's diner for both her and her inn.

The “monster of the woods,” Quinn. I had the most fun with them, as it let me try new and interesting things like blending textures and creating unusual rigs like digitigrade legs.

All of these models are also available in Marmoset Viewer format on my artstation here.