Ker Hu
3D Artist
The Fall of Turtle Reef is a tower defense game with rogue-like elements by indie studio Rise and Brine Games. With many tower defenses on the market being rather linear, our team focused on creating a simple tower defense game with cute graphics, is casual and easy to pick up, and have a higher re-playability value. Started as a game jam project from the Quiver Game Developer's Guild Incubator, the dedication and passion in the original month-long prototype project inspired our team to continue working on our game to release it on Steam next year. As such, any gameplay footage is subject to change.
As the sole 3D artist on our team, I was responsible for all 3D assets alongside technical aspects such as rigging and animation. Throughout this project, I was able to learn new software and develop pipelines that worked well for our indie game. Although I had participated in a few smaller events before, I've never really done a full game jam like this before. A lot of work went into our game, and I'd like to showcase some of the more unseen aspects of video game creation.
G A M E P L A Y
A R T A S S E T S
E A R L Y C O N C E P T S
As a character artist and somewhat of an ocean nerd, I was tasked with designing the various critters in the game.
M I S C E L L A N E O U S
As an avid Maya user, I've never touched Blender before this project. Learning to rig in Blender was rather difficult at first as the controls are very different than what I am used to, but once I figured it out, it was the same workflow I am familiar with.
Initial tests in Arnold and Blender. I decided to go with a softer hand-painted feel instead of cel shaded like I had originally planned. I love the look of hand-painted textures and with simple models like these, I think it helps and make them look more detailed and polished.
Asper has gone through many different... forms throughout the month of the Quiver Incubator. (Un)fortunately due to my lack of experience in Blender, importing rigs and animations into Unreal Engine 5 was very confusing for me in the beginning as it was a little different than my pipeline in Maya. Despite my countless hours of pain and tribulations, the hilariously broken and glitchy results are something that I'll remember forever.
