High Steaks
Oct 2023
Student project @ Vancouver Film School.
My contributions: 3D Environment Artist, 2D Artist.
High Steaks is a first-person perspective melee combat game. EatWell Enterprises' latest growth hormone has mutated all the farm animals into malefic monsters. Play as Copperhead, an eccentric cowboy fanatic jobbed with destroying these animals and covering up EatWell's mistake in their dangerous relic of a slaughterhouse. Use your grapple hook to reel in enemies and reach far locations, and use your cowboy boot to punt creatures into deathtraps.
I was this game's environment artist which consisted of hard surface modeling, texturing, lighting, and creating some 2D assets. This also included other responsibilities like some shader work, and all menu/HUD components. I was one of a team of six developing this game as part of a school project. With the rest of the team, I discovered how much I love working collaboratively.
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on the VFS arcade page.
High Steaks trailer, edited by Ikaro Siqueira and Zayle Radomi.
Animals and breakable teeth created by Cole Fuller.
Opening area.
I wanted to present the slaughterhouse as antagonistic, even before the events of the game, when it was still being occupied by employees. Most artificial lights are a burning orange or sickly green to reflect the dilapidated environment they illuminate.
Freezer and corridor.
I had to create interesting scenes within our level designer's proportions. I focused on providing visual triangles, which would cascade into leading lines. There are lots of other art theory utilized when I was developing High Steaks.
Corridor and sewer.
Vertical detail is one of the most important properties to prevent a boring image. Our player character has a high range of mobility, and I had to take into consideration how I would create non-intrusive vertical detail. This would often result in intangible lights taking volumetric space in the ceilings and/or visual detail hugging the walls providing reasonable collisions.
Corridor and sewer.
Our art pipeline was fast-forwarded by creating modular sets of props such as pipes so other team members can easily add setdressing with precision and confidence.
Some decal assets.
The utilitarian setting of the game allocated space for explicit tutorials similar to real life warning signs. This also allowed some fun, non-intrusive Easter Eggs by dropping our team's names as company titles.
Additional poster assets were supplied by our collaborator, Kai Radomi.
The Team
Stephanie Cheung - Project Manager
Ikaro Siqueira - Game Designer
Justin Wong - Technical Designer
Zayle Radomi - Technical Artist
Cole Fuller - Character Artist
Kyle Lagrimas - Environmental Artist