The Secret to a Successful House Show is a 2D point & click game about a thief who carries out a contract to steal valuables from a musician's home. 

Over the past few years at Columbus College of Art & Design, I have been studying as a 3D artist. I designed the style of this game so I may deviate from my usual workflow and dive back into my illustration roots along with learning new game design workflows. 

Actually, last semester I dabbled in After Effects and created a rig of a really fun electric violinist bird character. I knew even then that I wanted to create a game surrounding around this character. I mean, who wouldn't want to play as or against him?!

One of my challenges in designing a game around him was to design someone balance out this type of character! I spent a lot of time designing a protagonist to compliment his beefy and hardcore design. My first thought in the protagonist design was to make another bird. This changed to tiny human thief, which then convinced me to try out the stereotypical theft based animal; a fox. 

Here is the final design of the playable character you get to rummage around a musician's house as! Colors are very open to change as I play around with the values and hues of the interior living space, where the house show will take place and where you will spend most of your time in game. 

I want the environment to feel lived in. The living room should breathe the life of a dude who eats junk food, smokes with friends, and plays violin all night. This is definitely what is in the roughest stages currently. I would like to block out the environment in Maya to then trace in proper perspective and embellish with the personality I envision.

The plot of the game was fun to come up with! I know I wanted my game to have a strong motivation for the player to explore the art I create. I wanted the player to want to explore the environment, interact with props, listen to characters speak. The plot started as a fanboy bird collecting musician trading cards. The rockbird character previously made was simply going to be an idol on one of the cards you can collect. I wanted the story to take a dark turn, maybe the fanboy steals trading cards from stores. I went a step further and said what if from those stores, he stole instruments and sheet music to better himself at those skills? 

The story finally evolved to focus on the thief as he breaks into the rockbird's house and have a clear ending of finding the most valuable item. Above is a game flow chart, so I could visualize the player's path throughout the game.

Thanks for reading my mind dump along with looking at my concept art! I am excited to tackle unity, and continue to document my process as I create The Secret to a Successful House Show.