Stressing that this blog post does not represent Hipster Whale – it’s my personal blog!

Trailer for this limited time game mode! It goes for 2 weeks!

The elements of my key art were repurposed by the marketing team into this chaotic thumbnail haha
It really is like those bombastic youtube thumbnails I see about :0

I hope this Crashy Cart mode we’re testing out comes back the future when that gets figured out!

(I have no control over this personally, I’m just one of the artists ;P)

We did indeed put a lot of work into this!

With the game mode itself, I helped out with Trolley Chicken character art here plus her different/crashed poses! I didn’t do the in game environment!!

Another artist, the art lead, engineering lead and other lead team members for this mode iterated on this environment art and the mechanics plenty within the limited time they had! It was something that kept growing in scope :’D

Digressing, happy to see people enjoying the mode so far! 😀

Some pen figure studies from August

I forgot about posting these studies but I tend to space things out anyway

✨ Sirfetch’d

Pen sketch of Sirfetch’d with their leek sword and shield and looking smug
I liked this enough to share ;P Out of context Pokemon doodle hehe

I kept getting his body wrong so this is actually the 2nd attempt ;D

Crashy Cart Feature key art I helped make in Blender!

3D illustration of Crossy Road’s Chicken inside her trolley, blasting through the shopping parking lot. In the background Unihorse and Mallard are stunned in the middle of putting away their shopping into the open orange car’s trunk. They are surrounded by other parked cars, shopping bags, trolleys, shoppers, trees and store buildings. WordPress made my gradients look poop

I did this with the art direction, guidance and feedback from the art team!! And repurposed/built upon this mode’s in game art and added to the shoppers a bit.

And much thanks too to the marketing team at the concepting stage! 😀

This piece took me a long time since I wanted to make an evergreen illustration that feels fleshed out with a bunch of things and shopping bags happening in the background. Did this in the hopes that this mode will come back :’D

Used Blender shenanigans I haven’t before like the warped ground and environment art. There’s so many parts to with 3D things :’) That said, I’m super happy with this key art!! I need several months away from it though because I can’t see it as objectively right now. I just remember what I was doing in the weeds for each element…

I really like my 2D concept illustrations I made for this key art but I don’t think I can share my concepts…! I got very ambitious in the beginning concepts with lots of Crossy references and I toned it down ;P I kept the teddy (Comfy Traveller from Airport), the rubber ducky (At Home world) and the shopping trash bags in though.

Also I did a bunch of simple, silly vertical marketing animations this past week or so – I’ll share those when they go public 😀 That was also a learning experience because I haven’t really practiced enough with animated shorts!

I’m insecure with my lack of mileage with animation (it’s just so much…). I’m not super strong at 3D animation and not sure on what level of time/effort for something like social media is enough. I don’t know what standard I should be striving for with social media animations and art since it’s more silly/smaller scale and lower stakes. And what kind of humour that suits Crossy and that I also enjoy too. At the moment I think I’m more about slice of life, silly random vibe/moments for some lower effort animation. Things with more action and movement usually need more time/effort to get right :<

AIl the same, I need more practice as usual. Ah the lifelong journey :’)

Leonie rambles about…

• I am not bothered talking about the Game Awards since it’s not really serious
  • it’s a popularity contest with their game selection…
  • and it really is a 3 hour game ad
• Bummed I can’t watch Dead Man Walking: A Knives Out Mystery at short notice in the cinemas
  • why is it just a week in cinemas and why can’t it be in December!! Netflix WHYYYY
• yes I am still playing Sudoku but also still juggling my manga reading haha
  • I hope to read Fujimoto’s short stories manga when the end of year break happens so I don’t get carried away ;P
• Watched Dispatch so spoiler talk:

It’s a good game and I can’t say much on the “dispatching people” mechanics itself when I only watched it being played. Been 7 years in development!! It really feels like a telltale/interactive superhero/suicide squad TV show and what shines are the character interactions. A lot of the story is compelling but pretty straightforward if you look deep into it. And Flambae’s karaoke song is still stuck in my head!! I’m not sure if I find the villain compelling though…it’s not really too deep with him…he just wants to be right with all the odds calculated in his selfish favour. How long has Robert been working at SDN??? And the romance kinda feels forced at times with the underlying HR violation shenanigans and sexual harassment. I do know that people want more romance options but alas this is not a dating sim. It seems like a lot of people chose Invisigal but I like Brunette Blazer more. I like them both overall just eh not sure about dating your boss or employee here. You can choose none of them though. Overall the endings aren’t too substantially different – just the flavour on which characters you sided with more, if you killed Shroud, who you ended up with, and if you did it in a heroic, anti-heroic or “normie” way. Ultimately it’s back to the status quo of “whelp just saving, fighting and helping people in this town/place” and it’s “just another day” kind of vibe. I guess I felt let down that there wasn’t really any deep takeaway from it – just a bunch of messed up powerful and flawed people/beings who became a found family through the course of the game. I wished for more moments so I can get to know these characters better beyond their powerful personas/image – I feel like I don’t know them deep enough beyond the quips and the interactions when they’re at work or after that bar fight. I don’t feel like I know them deep enough to feel the found family vibe between all of them myself but that’s just me. The interactions and characters are great anyway. I don’t have one favourite character though…maybe Beef the dog haha

Anyhoo I have things to juggle as usual!! I won’t ramble further ;P

And a lot of new things to learn and figure out next week – hopefully I can take my time with some/most of it D:

I do not look forward to house work in the coming month…

Catch you around at my little discord server! I shared some more art and comic resources there ;D

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