Michelle Bryant – Environment & UI Artist
Hi all, I'm Michelle Bryant, one of the six artists on Bugby. I originally attended Stout with the intention of becoming a concept artist for the video game industry but have since developed an interest in Localization, which is adapting the language of one product to another for a specific country or region. During my free time, I study languages. Currently, I am learning Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Thai, and Tagalog.
The World of Bugby
I have bounced around a bit during our team’s development process on Bugby, from researching growth formations of different mushroom types to exploring different way trees grow. I know that my sound a bit dull or odd, but as the world of Bugby takes place within a whimsical forest, a lot of research and exploration into these forms was needed in order to create an interesting and believable environment.
This portion of exploration allowed our art team to figure out what we are looking for in terms of what the evironment will look like and how we would like to approach designing the level so that it is not only aesthetically pleasing, but also allows players to traverse it.
UI
In addition to exploring and creating environmental assets for Bugby, I’ve also worked on our graphics for the user interface. Many of the design choices were influenced from exsisting assets, such as our “bugball” and the goblin player character. I creating our UI graphics, I've tried to reflect the playful nature of our game as well as help the player orient themselves within the level.
The icons that help players keep track of their teammates take a cue from the player character. The icon to locate the ball also mimics the pillbug model and will change to either blue or red, depending on the team holding the ball. If the ball is not in the possession of either team, it will turn grey.