The Mariverse
The Mariverse
The Mariverse
.png)
Jay Miles
Narrative Designer - Game Developer
My Involvement
I was a part of a team for development. I was Credited as the Artist for this game.​
​​​​​
I was responsible for creating the player character, 2 bosses, their animations and other sprite assets. I also made a game trailer that has over 30 seconds of animation.
At the start of the project, we brainstormed and thought of different ideas with the theme of 'Spin'. in the end, we considered 2 possible ideas.
​
1 ) A game where the record player spins arround.
​
2) A game where Pluto fights the solar system (with planets orbiting counting as spinning)
​
Due to the possible idea that other developers will consider space themes, the record player was more unique and stood out, so we decided to go to that idea.​​​​
(Early visual concepts of the 'Pluto' idea, art made my me.)
Player Character Design
Once we figured out our game idea, the first thing I did was think about the player character, and, considering the environment, I made sketches to see what kind of character would appear in such a game.
​
We thought of different ideas. Insect characters, DJ clothing, robots, robots themed around music and the record player, a needle leg, and at one point a cleaner, and even randomly thought about a walking cactus.
​
We ended up with a design of an ant in a cleaner outfit. We also thought about the idea of 360 aiming, so we decided that the player character would be armless to make the 360 hand aiming work.​
(Top 3 choices after several designs, 1. ended up as the final design.)
(Various designs for the Player Charcter, sketched by me.)
Player Animation
After making the sprite with the final deisgn, I then worked on animating the character. I used Piskel to create short and quick animation, less frames with all animation running at 16 Frames per second (FPS).
Here are some animation samples:
Idle
Move
Dash
Taking damage
I also created the hand and gun for the player character, with animation and a projectile, however in the final build, for some reason, the hand never appeared.
Idle
Shooting
Projctile
Bosses
I made the visual design for 2 bosses in Clean Deck,
The Dustbunny and Le Millepattes (Caterpillar)
First was the Dustbunny, first thinking of a literal dustbunny, then making that dustbunny into a DJ. I was inspired by the head of Deadmus5 to create the head of the Dustbunny.
​
For animation, I had the Dustbunny dancing and making taunts, knowing that the boss is meant to be a 'bullet hell' type of boss.
Dustbunny Animation
Idle 1
Swipe
Taunt 1
Entrance 1
Taunt 2
Idle 2
Entrance 2
Defeated
.png)
Next is the Caterpillar, originally, one of the developers wanted a Worm boss, another thought of the boss as a slug, but as the artist, I wanted something more creative, something unexpected for a boss, so I decided to make a Caterpillar.
​
The reason I thought of the Caterpillar design was because I was considering a 5th boss, where the Caterpillar turns into butterfly and fights the player. But due to the deadline coming closer, the idea never happened.
Caterpillar (Head) Animation
Idle
Mouth Open (start)
Mouth Open (while)
Defeated
Game Trailer
To try and stand out from the Game Jam, I decided to create a game trailer. How I made the trailer is by creating the art on MS Paint digital art, record gameplay using OBS for screen capture, and put it all together using Hitfilm Express video editor.
​
​It took a day to make and I ended up making 30 seconds of animation. With the rest showing gameplay and promotion of the game.
