Those Dam Fish!
Apr 2023
Student project @ Vancouver Film School.
My contributions: 3D Character Artist, 3D Environment Artist.
Those Dam Fish! is a isometric tower defense game. Minnesota has had a deluge of radioactive water mutating the local beaver and fish populations. Control the now intelligent beavers as they defend their home against the literal marching armies of fish with mutated feet.
I was this game's character and environment artist. I was in charge of designing the fish with the only prompt being "but they have legs." There was a lot of realized potential focusing on different shape hierarchy and fun in the gross-out aspects.
Walleye.
Our team included a person from Minnesota who pitched the theme of the game. Afterwards, the two of us discussed common fish in the area to elevate that theme. He boldly stated that "every Minnesotan has caught at least one walleye." Thus, this enemy type is the most common found in-game, and designed with narrow legs to promote rapid speed but grunt weakness.
Trout.
I wanted to disregard the weight of the fish in reality to the commonality of them when deciding commonality of them in-game. This needed to be demonstrated with their leg size ascending as they became more rare. The trout has wider legs, but uses a lot of their belly to move and balance themselves, like a tripod. This aspect segues into the final fish type.
Bass.
I chose a quadruped design to evoke the mass of a highly defensive enemy unit.
The legs of the fish are imaginatively malefic colons escaping through their gills. The large intestine has the ability to twist back into its intended shape, with this unnerving fact being elevated as if they became their own parasitic, mind-controlling being.