PROM WEEK
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In 2010 I created characters for a game called "Prom Week," produced by the Expressive Intelligence Lab at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
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The game was playable on Facebook for a number of years, finally becoming unplayable on that site in 2019. However, the project can still be followed and the game downloaded as a .swf here.
The game takes place in a high school the week leading up to Prom. For this game, I designed a number of characters in Illustrator, both in their everyday outfits and in their Prom outfits.
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The first group of 12 contains several "cliques" including 2 band geeks, 2 skaters, 2 computer nerds (one of which was a design request / fan art of my friend Sherol), there were also 3 frowning emo kids and 3 goths. Later, 4 "preppies" and also a few bullies were added.
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I also designed several of the game backgrounds and contributed UI designs as production went on.
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The game was a finalist at Indie Cade 2012 and was a runner-up at the Independent Games Festival 2012.
As production went on, the stories behind these characters became more elaborate. The talented game writers Aaron Reed and others, as well as the innovative A.I. expertise of professors Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Michael Mateas, gave these characters increasing depth and made the world of Prom Week increasingly detailed and complex. I was asked to design an additional cast of characters, each of whom was given a background story and personality in the game. The written scripts of the character dialog, which changes depending on the choices of the player, is a massive accomplishment in itself.
