While I’ve been quiet…

… I’ve been working on this guy! Meet The Rat Prince, my character contribution to an as-yet unnamed pseudo-claymation game being developed by Nitric Burn Studios. Each artist is putting together their own unique clay creature and a series of clay background assets; the project is in very early stages, but after a week of animation tests and manipulating footage of our clay beasties, things are looking pretty promising. I only have a few weeks left with the studio, so most of my time is going to go into producing animation cycles for my character that they will later be able to plug into the game engine.

My character owns a pawn shop, and calls himself the Rat Prince as a mattress salesman might call himself the Mattress King. He has become obsessed with the work, and thoroughly believes that one man’s trash is another rat’s treasure. He is bitter rivals with the two-faced cat with the competing thrift shop across the way, offended by her trendy ways and her low prices. Another artist here is making the two-faced cat, so she will be a playable character as well. Other creatures include a goat, a rabbit, and one as-of yet undetermined creature.

The claymation work is a nice change of pace from Rapstar Heroes, the hip-hop & rap inspired sidescroller I’ve been working on with the studio since I got out here in late May. The coding on the level editor is in it’s final stages; supposedly the artists will be able to begin designing levels as soon as this weekend, which is exciting! We’ve been putting together assets for ages, it will be very rewarding to finally see the game come together. Before beginning work on the claymation game, I spent some time making background assets for a few of the Rapstar levels; they are quite silly, but then, so is a game about rappers fighting aliens in Pittsburgh, so there you go.