Crystal Call — Taylor George - Prop and Environment Artist

Crystal Call is a fast-paced first-person speedrunner taking place within fractured ruins floating inside mysterious caves. Armed with a magical gauntlet, run, dash, blast and slide your way through challenging environments, master each level, find secrets, and compete for the top spot on the leaderboards.

Statistics

Project Length: 17 Weeks (3 weeks of preproduction, Completed December 2020)

Team Size: 10 Developers (3 artists)

Weekly Hours: 15

Engine: Unreal Engine 4

Platform: PC

Download it on Steam! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1410840/Crystal_Call/

Responsibilities

I was responsible for all of the UI elements and visual effects of Crystal Call, as well as the enemy design and additional environment assets as needed.
I was responsible for collaborating across disciplines to ensure that all the effects were implemented as intended. This included working both in-person and online in a virtual space.
Early in production, I composed mood boards, color palettes, and concepts to aid our art lead, Dana Brooks, in creating the visual style and language of the game.

Individual Work

Moodboards and Concepts

In the pre-production stage of development, I created a series of mood boards for different directions the game could take. This is a process I enjoy and start all of my projects with, so my Lead trusted me with this responsibility. Elements from each found their way into the final game.

Following that, I created concepts for the Enemy Turret and Heat Bar. I also created a custom runic alphabet, working with our GD and Art Lead to keep it in line with the vision of the game. This alphabet was then used on the environment assets, as well as some promotional stickers.

Enemy

I was in charge of our enemy design, from the concept to the end result. I've shown some of the stages below. We had intended on having more than one enemy style in the game but cut down to one for the sake of our scope and improving our core gameplay loop.

Textures inside of Substance Painter, then in engine, then in game.

Visual Effects

I was responsible for all of the VFX for Crystal Call. I created all particle systems using Niagra inside of UE4. The sprites and various noise textures used for the systems were created in Photoshop. Shown below are my personal favorites. The enemy death particles, the "speed line" effect at the edge of the screen, and the fireflies.

To implement these features, I worked very closely with our programmers to ensure the bugs were fixed and the systems would play as they needed to.