The cast of characters you meet in the game
The main game screen for Spelltacular Smoothies
Spelltacular Smoothies was made for Cozy Spring Jam 2024
Software used: Blender, Zbrush, Substance Painter, and Unreal Engine
We had a nine person team and I was in charge of the background environment art. Since we had a lot of people with different specialties, especially 2D based art specialties, we decided to take inspiration from the show The Amazing World of Gumball which uses 2D characters and 3D backgrounds.
The environmental concept art made by Grace Rigoni
I started by making a quick block out of the ruins in Blender and made the high poly in Zbrush. When I was ready to move on, I used Substance Painter to hand paint the assets.
High poly ruins in Zbrush
The game itself was being made in Unity. The team wasn't initially sure of how to add a 3D background to a 2D game. Eventually, we decided the easiest way to do it would be to add the environment as a video playing behind the 2D smoothie stand. Luckily, creating environment videos was something I already had a lot of experience doing for my Cozy Bunny Ambience Youtube channel.
I used Unreal Engine 5 to create the landscape. I used Ultra Dynamic Sky to create the realistic moving clouds for the scene. I then edited the video so it wouldn't be very noticeable when it looped.
