The Artist Formerly Known as Sherol in the Global Game Jam

My first attempt being and artist for a game. By the way, I’m not an artist.

This last weekend, I participated in the Global Game Jam.  Basically, you form teams with the people at your development site (mine was UC Santa Cruz), and you get 48 hours to make a game.  The topic this year was deception, and our game needed to have either skunks, monks, or punks in it. We went with skunks.

Since we (my team) were all programmers, I decided I’d like to experience (for once) the other side of things and worked on the art, music, and sound.  Now, many people think that I make games for my degree, which isn’t quite the case.  As a result of my studies, I do occasionally need to build some interactive experience to test the technology I’m developing, but I’m not in school to learn how to make good games.  I’m in school to figure out ways to make games better or easier to create.

In any case, our game was called “Rovers Inferno” for reasons that aren’t important enough to explain.  What is noteworthy is how much I enjoyed code, art, and sound jamming with so many people.  Grant it, every girl has some experience drawing princesses, flowers, puppies, and kitties, but the cool thing about interactive media is that these characters need to have a way to respond to human users.

In a lot of ways, as I design the aspects and objects of my world, I get to take on the role of an intelligent designer– god of my own universe.  I have appreciation of not just what I do, but more so what and how God must have done it.  We are in His image, indeed.

I wanted to play jazz saxophone for some of the game music and also just needed a reason to play my horn.

Reasons why I loved Game Jamming:

• I got to use a Wacom tablet for the first time and create art that went into a project (also, for the first time).
• I got to premier my barking and meowing skills (I’d been waiting for the day my barking would come in handy).
• I got to use cool jazz music programs, and even got to feature a short solo on my t. sax at the end of the game.
• I learned about making game sprites (not as easy as it seemed).
• I learned about audio programs and editing.
• I learned I could probably make it as my own mediocre (casual) game company.
• Basically, I was born to make the art and sound assets for a game like this.

See my sprites animated, after the jump 🙂