Wednesday, August 26, 2009

MIT Summer 2009 (SHADOW SHOPPE)

YAY!
Guess what went live today? Yes, you're right! The MIT GAMBIT Games! Good guess.
Which means that finally I get to post some of the art I've been working on recently. :D
I DID THIS:





That's the main poster (there are two other color variations) for the project I was assigned to: Shadow Shoppe. I was privileged to work with some of my best friends and some very talented and gracious students from Singapore. We were holed up in a beautifully appointed lab at MIT for the sole purpose of developing video games in response to a variety of research questions. The game was developed entirely from the ground up with the basic question:
"How do people associate certain types of traits with basic forms and shapes of character design?" Trickier than it might seem, actually.

Thom Chang and I worked on Shadowshoppe. I'm responsible for half of the concept work, and all of the backgrounds. He accounts for the other half of the concepting and all of the animation in-game. Oh, and I also did all of the voice-acting for the game! I love voice-acting! Head on over to the following link to play the game and let me know what you guys think!

Play Shadow Shoppe
(Click "Go To Website" and please don't be put off by the age/gender/location form...it's for the research aspect of the project)

Here are some screenshots from the game, for added visual interest!








My fabulous friends and colleagues are also responsible for much of the artwork on some of the other projects, all of which can be found here.
For those of you familiar with the rotating cast of characters in my life. My friend Fabiola Garza worked on Camaquen, and roommate Brandon Cebenka worked on Waker. Definitely check out their games and all of the new work up on the website!

I will leave you for now with a poster all of us GAMBIT kids (art team) put together at the end of the program. We each took a crack at drawing eachother's characters, since over the course of the summer we all generated a lot of fan-art :) I did the Dearth characters and had a large hand in collaging this all together. Stay tuned for more concept art and doodles if I get permission! :D





GAMBIT kids, if you're reading this: I miss you. I'll see you in Singapore some day! Here's to a fantastic summer!
Much love,

-Nick

4 comments:

Sophia Foster-Dimino said...

This game is making me giggle so hard.

I'm not that far, but the voice acting is so entertaining. I like the "wawawawow!" of the boxes :3

Not to mention the art is gorgeous! Amazing work!

Sophia Foster-Dimino said...

Yay, I beat it. The last level was difficult.

Will the data gleaned from tons of people playing this game eventually be made public? I'm curious as to the associations people make with various body shapes.

Anonymous said...

WOW! Nick, amazing.
I'm afraid to download it to dad's computer. I'll ask him to do it later. So, at this point, I'm just amazed by looking at the poster and the screen shots! Can't wait to hear your different voices!
Was it as fun to work on as it looks?
Well done, son!
mom

tina said...

Nic!!
It was great to have you on our team as the artist for Shadow Shoppe. I had a wonderful time working with you.

We missed you at all the GAMBIT events that we've been attending here.
Come to Singapore soon. WE're all waiting for you :)