Disney Dreamlight Valley - Capture Artist
- September 2021 - cont.
Since late September 2021 I've been honoured to work at Gameloft once again, this time on the Creative Agency Team as a capture artist for their cross-platform game Disney Dreamlight Valley: a blend of life-sim, farming game, and beloved Disney storytelling!
As a capture artist, my main job is to work in the engine (in this case, Unity) to set up and edit a scene, and record footage and screenshots of these scenes for various uses. Most notably, captures done between my coworkers and I are featured on the storefront of the game on each of the available platforms. I have also taken video footage that was used in short clips posted to social media, premiered at D23, featured in Nintendo Direct, and shown on television. As of late 2022, my main responsibility became producing in-engine captures for the trailers and for the keyarts that would be featured as promotional images and as the in-game loading screens.
The process of setting up a scene can vary from one shot to another, but for the most part the placement of props and characters is done by manually adding them through the project/assets folder and manipulating them in the scene window in Unity. Sometimes a premade setup is provided, usually to accomplish a specific purpose such as showcasing certain items, and this is usually loaded through Playfab in the debug menu. All camera effects, such as depth of field and post processing, that can be done in the Unity engine is used as much as possible to reduce the amount of paintover needed.
DDV has launched in early access in early September 2022, and launched officially in November 2023.
Materials:
- Unity
- Git / Fork
- Adobe Premiere
- Adobe Photoshop
- OBS Studio
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(All images and video are publicly available on the internet via presskit, blogs, or social media. Only shots that I have personally captured screenshots and footage for are featured here - with the exception of the main keyart and logo for displaying purposes. Raw images and footage from me will not be available at any time.)
Avatar Designer Demo keyart - I captured all avatars and characters individually on greenscreen. Compositing, paintovers, and text were done by my coworker Gabriela.
Storefront Screenshot - I was given a reference image and was made to replicate it as closely as possible using the ingame postprocessing and lighting tools. After a bit of pointing in the right direction, I achieved a look very similar to the given concept.
Promotional screenshot - I posed all characters and decorated the background, as well as provided additional in-engine lighting and visual effects to achieve a warmer, sunset look
Storefront Screenshot - I edited and polished the scene in Unity, which was originally set up by my coworker Edwin, and captured the still image
Storefront screenshot - this one was particularly exciting because it features one of my childhood movies, Atlantis! A lot of lighting was added and manipulated by me to look nicer for the shot.
Social Media post: Pixarfest - I captured this scene in Unity using a premade customized room that was created for the event items.
Presskit Screenshot - I created and captured this scene in Unity. I also created a version of this shot with a female avatar, but it was not used in the official presskit.
Presskit Screenshot - Not much to add about this one. The low angle was fun, though!
D23 blog screenshot
Social Media post: Disney+ Day - I created and captured this scene in Unity. Glow from the TV was added in paintovers.
Demo Screenshot - I created and captured this avatar on a greenscreen in Unity, edited him onto the cloud background, and added the UI from the Demo in Photoshop. I also edited an English and French version of the UI.
Storefront Screenshot - I created and captured this scene in Unity. I also provided paintovers to misaligned wall textures and floating shadows.
Social Media post: Pixarfest - I captured this scene in Unity using a premade customized room that was created for the event items.
Demo Screenshot - I created this avatar and her custom dress in the Demo, and captured a screen gran with OBS.
Social Media post: Pixarfest - I captured this scene in Unity using a premade customized room that was created for the event items.
Divine Rush - Capture Artist
- March 2024
I was assigned to work with a secondary team to produce some trailer shots and screencaps for the work-in-progress racing game, Divine Rush.
Unfortunately, this project did not pan out and was ultimately dropped, but during my time working on it I was tasked with communicating with the Phantom devs to help pinpoint what sorts of tools may be practical or necessary for the engine to have in terms of video and image capturing. In addition, I compiled all known information about using the engine and wrote a concise guide on how to use the Phantom engine for capture.
Materials:
- Phantom Studio game engine
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(All images and video are publicly available on the internet via presskit, blogs, or social media. Only shots that I have personally captured screenshots and footage for are featured here - with the exception of the main keyart and logo for displaying purposes. Raw images and footage from me will not be available at any time.)
Promotional screenshot - taken fron the front to show the character running away from the vortex
Promotional screenshot - shot from behind to showcase the 'wall running' ability, and the ability pickup item
Foodies Table - Technical Game Designer
- July-Dec. 2019
From mid-summer all the way through my fall semester at Concordia, I participated in an internship at Gameloft Montreal for Technical Game Design. During my time there I worked with the team of Foodies Table, a game inspired by the online trend of photographing plates of food for social media.
As a Technical Game Designer, I mainly helped produce gameplay levels (called challenges) by designing the backgrounds using 3D assets created by the artist team, and integrating pre-coded interactive elements into the challenge that would allow players to add objects and food to the scene. During this process I would choose the parameters for the interactive elements, determining what kinds of props the players would be allowed to use for each interactive node. I was also personally tasked with creating some finished challenge designs for use as examples within the game tutorial.
Along with designing challenges, the Technical Game Design team also assisted with testing gameplay and corrected any bugs or errors present in each scene before passing them on to the approval stage. Toward the end of development we were also tasked with creating groups of assets and node templates, with the intention of preparing interchangeable configurations that would be used in the future of the game for the sake of expediting the challenge creation process.
Unfortunately, the game did not meet internal expectations and was production was officially stopped in December 2019. Despite the cancellation of the game, I was overjoyed to have participated in its development and greatly enjoyed working with the team at Gameloft as my first foray into the industry.
Materials:
- Phantom Studio game engine
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(Images above include the Foodies Facebook banner, a screencap of the App Store page, the loading screen, an example of what a challenge would look like ingame, and four of the challenge design examples I produced.)