Echosim
My role: Art Director, 3D Generalist
This was one of the 14 games I was the Art Director for for the SeaWorld Parkwide game in Yas Island, Abu Dhabi. All of the games were based in real science, had an emphasis on education and there was a strong restriction on directly controlling any animals.
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This game was designed to show how dolphins use echolocation to see with their poor vision and in murky water. I was the Art Director for this project, but I also made tweaks to the environment as well as making particle systems.
Virtual animals
The client wanted to make it clear that in these games none of the animals being controlled were real, for most of the games our solution was to have machines in place of robots, that wasn't an option here.
Instead this game was an in universe simulation, so we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make it feel like a simulation, I worked with the technical artist on a solution, eventually we landed on having the scene fade in and out with a digital effect, as well as giving the echolocation a digital feel.
Environment Design
This project needed several biomes, shallows, caves, shipwreck, coral reef and a waterfall. I mapped the whole thing out on paper, and then blocked out the areas, some of the areas I created myself, using a mix of assets that I made and that had been purchased. I made the coral reef, caves and general terrain, the rest I oversaw our environment artist to make.
Additionally all of the particle effects in the scene were made by me.
