Character Creation and Rigging - Left Feet Only (2020)

These are the characters I made for Left Feet Only, a game prototype using Unreal Engine that features dancers crashing through a colorful obstacle course. This development was done through the Tesseract Center for Immersive Environments and Game Design through the University of Arkansas.

A key aspect of this project was to create colorful characters to embody the high-energy jazz and big-band feel of the game. I designed the characters with a more fluid gender presentation while paying homage to 1920's high fashion. This, with the additional monochromatic color per character, pushes back against the racist and homophobic ideology that was so prevalent in the 1920's. Not addressing this in the character creation process would create a disconnect from the "fun, over-the-top energy" world we wanted to create.

I created the characters from the concept art through rigging phases, to be handed off to our Technical Artist lead Nick Reynolds (https://www.artstation.com/nichoreynolds) where he handle the procedural animations. These dancers would crash through the wonderful levels created by Julio Nolasco (https://www.artstation.com/jrnolasco).