R. Dillhunt

Role: Creative Director

Team Size | 12
Dev Length | Ongoing
Tech | Photoshop, Maya, UE4, Powerpoint
Website | coming soon

As creative lead for Noise Paradox, I’m in charge of visual development for the game. This includes but is not limited to: world-building (character, environment design), creating and designing game documents, aiding and critiquing other artists’ work, providing concepts for particle effects, 3D models, and UI, as well as PR and public speaking related tasks.

Tasks
• Concept Art
• 2D Art: Texture, dialogue assets
• Art Direction
• Visual Development, style treatment
• Gameplay Design
• Public Speaking, PR

Early Development

Early concepts use premade unity store assets as a jumping off point for inspiration in the environments, and current industrial goth fashion for character development.

Main Protagonist: Alto

Alto is one of two playable main characters in Noise Paradox. While still young, Alto is slated to inherit the role of house head for House Welsht, the house which embodies the industrial-goth genre of EDM. Their design is intended to be dark and subdued, with a recognizeable and androgynous silhouette.

Inner Welsht Cities

The first environment up for development was a grungy, industrial post-apocalyptic environment meant to feel like a dance club or theatre backstage. repurposed pieces of rebar, pipes, and sheet metal give this environment a stark and jagged silhouette. It is peppered with glowing graffiti which resembles a musical staff.

Other Characters

The next stage in visual development was designing a few of the other key characters which play a role in the Noise Paradox story. First was Viola, the other playable character. We wanted her to be visually louder than Alto, while still feminine and a bit subdued, like the rest of her female-led house. Sonata, Viola’s mother, was developed alongside her as a visual foil—Sonata is modest, relatively unsaturated, and very streamline as is typical fashion for her house. While Viola has some elements that are reminiscent of her mother, her outfit is decisively less modest. Being that Viola is a rebel, part of developing her concept was considering how and where she might make her own changes to her outfit to better suit her sense of style and personal preferences.

Trill was designed next, and described as being “absolutely enormous”. Several real life people were used as inspiration for this cybergoth, vikingesque gentle giant. His design isn’t overly intimidating, as he is Alto’s father figure and a positive support figure in their life.

Combat Creatures

The last stage of development for the vertical slice was designing both the helpful and hindering inhabitants of the tower-defense like battle mode. The player needed a helpful summon, and the enemy needed to be autonomous and decisively different from whatever helpers were summoned by the player. Beat Spirits, the player’s minions, were created to be distinctly nonhuman, reflecting numerous existing species of animal. For the vertical slice, Alto’s spirits were considered, and show themselves in the form of wolves. The enemies, or Automata, are more human-like but still very different: inorganic, faceless, and driven.