BRIEF
Existentia is a side scrolling visual novel video game that focuses its scope on a mixture of science fiction and modern day themes. Originally dedicated as an idea for a limited animated series, the project evolved into what would become a fully interactable visual novel that includes 2D characters, 3D environments and candy for the ears and eyes. Its creative direction would lean into a very stylized selection of characters, as well as feature a fully pixelated world that would act as eyes into the future for teens and young adult audiences. Existentia is a project for my Senior Portfolio series, of which I was given 10 months to fully conceptualize and create the game completely from scratch despite having no prior programming experience. With virtually no budget and a short timeframe, constraints on the project were quite large. While proving a greater challenge, the project was solely intended to greatly expand upon my creative skills from musical composition, to 3D modeling, 2D illustration, animation, writing, and programming amongst others. With that in mind, the final result was a fully functional and interactive video game, featuring the entire pipeline that I, myself, got to fully experience from start to finish.
PROCESS
As stated before, this project was originally dedicated as a visual development portfolio that would serve as a concept for a limited animated series. With that being said, many of my inspirations vary widely amongst films and animated series such as Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Akira. As the project evolved into a game, I took inspiration from Signalis and Hades, both dialog-driven games that would act as a foundation towards the creative direction.
I began my process with sketches ranging from character ideation, architecture, the 5 Ws, color keys, thumbnails, style guides, and cover art. Refining these ideas, character sheets, media posters, props, and descriptions were made to fully flesh out details and understand why each detail matters to the character and story. The process continues into more rendered illustrations, focusing on key character moments, establishing shots, and the setting.
With a clear visual direction in mind, it was time to move towards the game development phase. With thorough research into game development, specifically utilizing Unreal Engine 5, I tasked myself in creating assets for the game such as pixelated animations, UI design, fully realized character profile illustrations, and textured levels that would all officially be implemented within the final stages of the game. At this point in the process, admittedly I was facing many daunting and challenging tasks, deriving from my lack in knowledge from many aspects of the video game process. Music composition, animation and programming are all mediums I had rarely touched beforehand, so I needed to adapt, learn from classmates and professors, and apply their feedback to the final results. Ongoing, character animations, lighting, music, and SFX were all introduced and completed within a span of just a month up until the programming phase.
DECISIONS
During the process, many key decisions had to be made. Some of these decisions include the following:
Media selection: Was this going to be an animated series or a video game? It was a huge question that I had to answer. While much of my knowledge relies on the visual development process for animation, video games would allow a more interactive experience that I believed would be most beneficial to the story. In the end, I chose this project to be a videogame. Not only would the story greatly benefit from this, being sci-fi related and being packed with many opportunities for interactive elements, I knew it would greatly challenge me. In the end, I am glad I made this decision, because from this project alone I greatly expanded my creative skills into softwares and processes I had been previously uncomfortable with.
Animation: With little impression on the 2D animation process, this was a medium that involved a huge learning curve during the creation process. The decision I had to make with this was how the characters would contrast and work with the environment. Would the characters be cell-shaded? Line based? Pixelated? In the end, I chose pixelated. My thought process was that this would allow me to complete animation sprites much quicker without focusing too much on detail and would feel like the characters fit into the world. This was a game breaking decision (literally), since the characters feel a part of the world, of which it would have been the complete opposite if it was line based.
Programming: This was by far the most daunting part of the project. With no knowledge at all besides some experience with Unreal Engine 5, I knew nothing about game programming or scripting. While not a decision I could make, the phase would spark many miniature decisions such as who to ask for advice, where to find helpful tutorials, and overall how to ensure nothing breaks and where to look for guidance. In the end, I made the decision to reach out to professors at LCAD and this saved me much time and effort, something I could easily apply to future projects relating to games.
DELIVERABLES
After 10 months of learning and executing, the game was officially finished on May 14 of 2026 where the final result would be play tested and presented to my Senior Portfolio 2 class. With all the mediums and creative inputs mentioned before (music comp., programming, animation, illustration, etc.), all of these aspects had come together to harmonize into one game. Taking place in a 3D world with a 2D character, the story is properly told, and more importantly, the project was finished on time and all deliverables were met.
REFLECTION
To say I learned a lot during this project would be an understatement. Within less than a year, through mostly self-taught methods, I was able to craft a fully functioning videogame that told the story I wanted to tell. Deliverables were met on time in phases, I managed my time to my greatest extent, and overall was able to complete the project with precision and great choices made solely by me. Just within this project, I was able to learn the fundamentals and real life experience of tackling music composition, writing, programming, and animation amongst other smaller minute mediums.
While I was able to successfully meet all of my deadlines, of course, there were many things I would do differently if done again. Writing the story first would be one of them. While the story was written in the earlier stages of the process, I learned that having a story to build off of saves much more time and energy that would be otherwise unnecessary without it. Learning proper music theory and consuming more media are other issues I faced. With no proper music theory, I played many of my tracks by ear rather than following a foundation or adhering to reason. With little lack of watching movies, playing games, etc., I found myself losing motivation and often feeling burnt out from lack of ideas in specific areas. Many of these problems I faced are topics that I will learn off of and implement into my future projects.
Although most of my work involves visual development, illustration, and background work, the creation of this videogame has taught me about the importance of experiencing the entire pipeline within a creative project. Questions such as “what does [department] need when doing [department deliverables] and what do I include with it to ensure an easy and efficient process?”, were all answered in this project. The importance of expanding creative inputs also taught me a lot, knowing that visual development most definitely won't be the only position I will be working towards, especially within smaller studios. Overall, I am overly proud of this project and believe it has made me a much stronger candidate when it comes to fully understanding the video game/concept art pipeline and experiencing-hands on mediums from all departments all done within a timely manner.