Set Dressing and Prop Art of Cui Cui

This is Cui Cui, a third person adventure platformer in which the player assumes the feathery role of Cui, a tiny, benign bird who seeks to save the world from an abrupt and total heat collapse. I served as the character and set dressing artist for CuiCui

Check out our website and all of my fantastic team at: https://www.cuiproductions.com/

Lead Design By Felix Faeh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/felix-faeh-1361b6175/
Lead Tech: Kenny Guayaguil: https://www.kennyguayaquil.com/
Lead Art By Abby Johnson: https://www.abbyjeanart.com/

Environment Art By Liz Davis: https://lizdavislda.artstation.com/
Environment Art 2 By Michael Marangoni: https://www.artstation.com/m_s_m

My duty as the set, prop, & character artist was to not only succeed in the modeling, texturing, and topology for our props and characters, but to manage the large chunk of problem-solving involved in the implantations of the characters and assets.

In order to make sure that the entirety of the users’ needs were met, I worked thoroughly to optimize the requirements of my level and mechanics designers, concept artists, animators, and technical designers.

Because Cui, and all her birdy companions, needed to operate in extreme lighting environments, this made for some interesting problem solving.

I needed to make sure that both the environment and the birds were readable in these lighting scenarios. (to see how I managed the characters Visit: https://samhall-thisway.artstation.com/projects/68dvVx?album_id=1750496 )

To do this, I heavy relied on textures and line of sign tricks.

I used metallic textures to 1.) create interest , 2.) slightly brighten the environment, and 3.) attract the player's line of sight to lead them to key puzzle components.

I also used some lighting tricks to discreetly spotlight important pieces of narrative.

I used darker and less reflective textures in unimportant areas to create less interest in them and highlight more important areas of the level.

In addition to serving as narrative, aesthetics, and level design tools, the props also needed to be used to control mechanics in certain areas. by creating levels of line of sight I was able to mask where this would have been obvious.

These are just some examples of the props I created from start to finish for the game. I also assisted in a large portion of the asset texturing and was responsible for all characters within the game.