Adopt a Rainforest

No posts on my comic book today, just kinda taking it easy before I dig back into it and draw the cover for the second issue.

So as a 'filler' post, I dug up something I worked on awhile back. I freelanced a bit for a company called LOLapps on a facebook game called "Adopt A Rainforest". I don't think it's up anymore because A) the landing page on Facebook only said it had 10 active users a day and B) When I try to connect it just gives me an error message!

This was my second social gaming gig I think, so it's interesting for me to see this body of work nowadays. I produced a lot of assets for the game. Come to think of it, I think I produced all the assets for it! But before I get into that, let me start at the beginning: it started out with a test.

I was given some character design parameters and look that LOLapps was trying to go for with this new game they were developing. I can barely remember what the parameters were, but this is what I submitted:

I have very little knowledge in working with Illustrator or Flash, so I did this guy in Photoshop. Luckily, the client liked what they saw and I landed the job. I recall that they were hiring other freelancers, but I think they must've settled to use just me (I could be wrong). Of course if I had known I'd be the only one producing art for this game I think I would've freaked out and not done it at all!

Anyhow, I produced a bunch of work and all of it was done after my regular job. So I would usually clock in another 3-4 hours a night extra once I got home. It was VERY tiring, but I must admit it was also good experience. I was producing, I think, 1 of these assets within 30 mins. I think I was averaging 45 mins to an hour per asset. The client wanted me to work faster and they seemed pretty happy with what I was producing...

Animal Character Designs

I think the fact that I worked so fast was stressful, but also very fun. I clocked my time, and budgeted what I could get away with with my schedule in mind. I think that disciplined me a lot to not dwell and move on to the next one. Admittedly, they're not all great designs, but there are maybe a couple in there that I still like.

Events

I learned alot about color and silhouettes with this project. Because I was working at a small size, I had to make sure things were clear and distinct.

Supplies

After these submissions, the client asked me if I could provide a background that all this art could reside on. I wasn't really thinking of backgrounds when I generated the art, so that was a little difficult to design. Backgrounds aren't quite my strength, I'm afraid. Still, it turned out okay.

Background

When I saw the game in action however, I wasn't quite that pleased with how they interacted with each other. I guess I didn't really plan ahead in how these things looked together.

Later on they asked me to generate a banner for them too. Of course I wasn't that great of a graphic artist either, but I dove in for that assignment as well anyway! Here are the designs I came up with: 

The last one ended up being the final comp that they liked.

It was pretty tough maintaining my day job and this at night. I was pretty tired, so I was quite happy once I shipped off the last of the assets for this game. While the freelancing gave me some great pocket money on the side and  invaluable lessons for my art, it was quite tiring. I don't thtink I'd be able to handle something like that anymore!

That's it for this post! God Bless and good morning!