MaskedOrchid
Technical Artist, Artist, Developer
Emotional World
Spring 2024
A 2D, platformer game where you play as the last unchanged human in a world where people’s outer form reflects their inner emotions. Along the way on your travels, meet an interesting cast of characters, each representing different emotions and their expressions. Emotional World was created by five students during our Game Dev 2 class.
My contribution being the character designs, 2D animations, tile map, concept art, Game Design and lead artist.
I wanted each character to reflect their supposed emotional expression while having design depth to house the complexity of that emotion and its experience. I used colors to hint at relations or similarities between the different emotions and their characters. Characters and the emotions they represent with similar colors are related and how their emotions are expressed or felt are similar, such as curiosity and Excitement.
Protagonist
The protagonist was another early character designed. I wanted them to be anonymous enough for the player to have emergent storytelling, while appearing down to earth and observant. Why I picked green and white as their clothes colors and the eye motif mask that they wear.
Inspired by the animation of Gris and Journey, I also wanted to give them flowy clothes that would give them a carefree personality while being easy to animate, as the protagonist would need a set of animations for their movement.
Sadness
Many who experience sadness can feel like the emotion is suffocating, giving a sense of hopelessness and overpowering. I wanted Sadness‘ design and the player’s interactions to capture this sense of suffocation and sometimes needing help from others to escape and heal from it.
The antlers create this striking silhouette. Sadness’s antlers give the impression that their head is too heavy and pulls them down, a repetitive sense of suffocation, and held back by their emotions.
Sadness represents an emotion that can not and should not be completely removed, but learn to feel, accept, and heal when experienced. Sadness is like a ghost that haunts you; it bubbles up and fades away sometimes on your own, or with help from others, but it’s always there. I wanted to show this ghost like aspect by making Sadness have a thin, ghastly body, glowing eyes, and endless ethereal tears. I also wanted the player to humanize Sadness, seen with the humanoid frame and white pupils.
Fear
Fear, sadly, cut from the game, is based on rats and snakes. Often in society, fear spreads like a plague, hypnotizing those who have it or spread it to say, act, or believe in things without question. I wanted to express this hypnotizing trait of fear in Fear’s design, from the rat and snake elements to the ringed eyes.
I also wanted Fear to look and act monstrous. I picked cautionary orange as Fear’s primary accent color and large toothy jaws.
Curioisty and Excitement
I wanted Excitement to have this buzz of energy, seen in the bulgy eyes, insect-like antennae, and small songbird body shape. I also wanted Excitement to strike a sense of cuteness with their fluffy, yellow body.
Curiosity was the first character I designed. I wanted Curiosity to give off a sense of adventure and the thrill of exploration. What creature is better than birds, who are known to be curious, and have the ability to fly to base Curiosity on. Curiosity is a very human emotion, and I wanted to humanize Curiosity through her face.
Tired and Calm
Tired and Calm are designed to be brother and sister, sharing similar facial features and emotions. Calm was designed to be more motherly, using deer and dragon motifs to bring maturity, ease and flow.
Tired was based on snails and their sluggishness. I wanted Tired to give off quiet, nerdy kid energy, shown in his bowl cut and the self made wheels on his shell.
