Spirit Crossing

Copyright: Spry Fox (Previously a Netflix Game Studio)

Discover, befriend, and care for Totoro-like spirits to build a cozy cooperative village! Climb everything, make awesome friends, and build a home together. A 3rd person climbing-centric non-violent MMO made in Unreal Engine 5. Find out more here!

I began working on Spirit Crossing with the Spry Fox team in 2019, helping to build the prototype with a small development team and as an artist alongside Art Director, Justin Oaksford, who established the overall visual style of the game. Moving into pre-production, I became the Lead Character Artist, focusing on developing all pipelines and processes for Character Art including modeling, texturing, materials, setting visual quality bars, and designing custom shaders. I also lead associated Technical Art processes, including rigging (working as the team’s sole rigger), blueprints, anim blueprints, retargeting, skinning, and VFX as it relates to our Character pipelines. I hired and trained character artists throughout production and worked closely with the team’s animators, developing tools that are easy to use and animation friendly. I contributed 3D animations early in prototyping and pre-production and took on leading animation and contributing animations again around launch. I continue to maintain character art documentation and lend time to environment and concept art as needed. Since our early prototype, I’ve been heavily involved in the visual direction, diversity, and ethos of our characters and how players use character customization as a tool for self expression, representation, and the exploration of identity.

Villagers

Modular Player Characters

Gliders: Models, Vertex Offset Shaders, and Trail VFX

Bears

Spirits

Sky Fish, Fish Vertex Shaders, Cloud VFX

Player Equipment and Instruments

Blots

Fluffalos