Hello!
My name is Steve Carcamo, I’m a 27 year old freelance Illustrator and Novice Game developer living in Newburgh, New York. I use digital media to create illustrations and animations for clients. I studied at the School of Visual Arts and have a Bachelors in Illustration. It was during my time in college that I realized I wanted to try my hand at various different disciplines. I took creative writing classes but also wanted to try animation. I knew I loved illustration so I took a lot of general art classes but I also wanted to see if I could code, so I took some classes on that as well. It was great and I learned a lot. I was always told I have to specialize but I found that as I improved in one discipline I also get better at another. And when I was hired as a game artist for a small indie studio, I felt like I finally found something that allowed me to do it all.
Ultimately I Decided I wanted to Make Games.
Game making incorporates all the things I love into one package. I can illustrate the backgrounds, write and animate for the characters and make the game function with coding. While I was working on the freelance game project I developed my own idea for a game. And while I wasn’t able to dedicate much time to it, the project slowly grew and I knew it was something that I had to make. And that’s is my proposal, To seriously start this project and to document my progress through a series of devlogs and concept illustrations.
What Is This Game
This Game is a rougelite strategy Role Playing Game. The games goal is to assemble a team of characters you find while exploring a mysterious never ending mental Labyrinth. Along the way you’ll fight scores of bosses and enemies till you reach the final encounter, a boss battle with the dungeons architect. The strategy aspect comes into play during the combat where you can pick between the allies you find while exploring to create an optimized team. The rouge lite element is used to describe how the ally characters you encounter and the enemies you fight won’t always be in the same order as someone else playing the game. You choose one of three doors but what’s behind each door is always random. I’d like to include linear pieces in the game but for me it’ll be more fun if it’s always changing, so everyone has their own unique experience with the game.
Story/Characters
You play a character trapped in a mental prison that’s shared by multiple characters. Each character has their own room which is created using that persons thoughts or emotions. Moving forward I want to push that idea forward more using surrealism as inspiration.
My goal for the characters is to have fully finished turn arounds and concepts for each character that appears. You can view some of the characters I’ve done already over at my Arstation by clicking here: artstation.com/stevecarcamo
What we’ll make
On top of making a demo, I’ll be making developer logs and concept art.
Building a Demo
The funding would be for the demo and concept illustrations. I’d like for the demo to introduce some of the characters you’ll be interacting with. As well as be able to walk around in the environment and interact with objects in the scene that will help you understand the characters more. As you can see in the video to the right I have walking down as well as adding animations to props and characters to make the scene more believable. The things I’m still figuring out is making the combat scenes work in the game. The ultimate goal is to have two distinct rooms and three hallways that battles are fought in.
All Art was Illustrated by me. This Art is Temporary and for the purpose of demonstration
Devlogs
Devlogs or developer logs are used to document the process of game design. This can be through speed paints which the drawing process is sped up or normal devlogs where I show video of the game or assets with commentary on how I tackled challenges and my thought process.
Concept Art
In order to work effectively concepting my ideas before I go into the final will be very important. These pieces can range from rough interesting sketches to fully rendered character illustrations.
Hegazi the dualist
The game starts you as a Hegazi. A heroine whose been aflicted by poweful stones that have set her as an outcast. Used normally these stones are used to give the characters of this world incredible powers. But due to an accident in her youth she pierced by dark stones that ran through her neck, face and right arm. This is very difficult for her to hide and makes her look menecing and for this reason strangers are quick to run when she comes around. Despite this Hegazi is a good person but because of the way she’s treated she often acts hostile towards most people.
Doppler the shape shifting brawler
One of the characters I Aim to have included in the demo is Doppler. They are an enegetic warrior type character who weilds a sentient staff made up of her three brother. They aren’t human so I hope to use them to explain a bit about who they are so that the player understands a bit of this characters deal. I aim to have her room included in the demo.
CAST AND CONCEPTS
Budget
Software
Photoshop, Toon Boom Harmony, Filmora are the app’s I’ll need to begin work on this project. I’ll be using Photoshop for character concepts and illustrating backgrounds and Props. Toon Boom for the character animations and Filmora for Documenting the process.
440$ For 4 Months of Photoshop, Toon Boom, and Filmora
Labor
I factor in working 4 days a week for 8 hours. I estimate the project will take 4 Months to finish. I’m factoring time spent solely working on the project.
1,060$
Passion
Creating something you enjoy is always great, so this ones free.
What This Means To Me
Applying everything I’ve learned to this project has been quite exciting but also very time consuming. This grant is the boost I need to take my game concept to the next level. And with the way things are that type of financial stability has been hard to find. I’ve been trying my best with this project to not only prove to myself that I can accomplish it but to others as well. So that hopefully one day I can continue the project with even more people at my side. I truly believe this is the first step in starting something extremely important in my life and I hope you’ll join me for it. Thank you for listening to my proposal!