My Role in Renegade 404
I was the primary game artist for Renegade 404, which included the concept art, 3D character/enemy modeling, rigging, and animations for the game.
Concept Art
Most of the concept art was of the main character robot- the idea of the game being speedrunning-focused/fast-paced was in the design process from the outset, so I started with designs that gave the impression of the player being agile but fragile. I worked in coordination with Allen Wang, who was a big help with the visuals of the game in general.
3D Work and Implementation
This was one of the first major projects I’ve done modeling and animation outside of proxy models, so I leveraged the robotic look of the concept art and focused on making models that were simple for the player to read and understand what they’re doing at any given point. These principles were applied to the other models created and animated, with all of the animations focused on being telegraphed to the player.
The visual style also inspired us to make the models render out as 2D sprites to fit the game’s 2D presentation. The game’s sprites are intentionally rendered at a lower resolution to give them a “pixelated” look, while them being fundamentally 3D models allowed for easier iteration than drawn sprites. Finally, the model was exported in “layers” with the arms on a separate layer to allow them to freely move based off the camera for the weapon, and then based on the grapple for the grapple arm. The layering process for the game can be found in the video below.
Graphic and UI Design
I did some of the work involved with the user interface, namely the weapon ammunition readout. The readout was initially not even considered in favor of a simple number readout, but we decided to go through with the readout UI since we thought it would look cool and would give players a quickly understandable readout of the amount of ammo they had left. Originally, we also had more weapons, but the railgun and katana were cut for time reasons.
Additionally, I did most of the layout work for the itch.io page, along with getting all of the screenshots, background image, and the trailer that is displayed on the download page.
CHRIS BRUNS 