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Sharktographer

Traverse the seafloor, and learn about creatures of the deep as you try to snap pictures of every unique species.

Sharktographer was made for a special exhibit at The Florida Museum of Natural History. Our goal was to educate attendees about marine life in a fun and engaging virtual reality experience.

Gameplay Footage

Process

Seahorse

Seahorse

Modeling, Texturing (Hand-painted)

Nurse Shark

Nurse Shark

Texturing (Hand-painted)

Brazilian Electric Ray (Top)

Brazilian Electric Ray (Top)

Texturing (Hand-painted)

Brazilian Electric Ray (Bottom)

Brazilian Electric Ray (Bottom)

Texturing (Hand-painted)

Puffadder

Puffadder

Texturing (Hand-painted)

Whale Shark

Whale Shark

Modeling, Texturing (Hand-painted)

Great White Shark

Great White Shark

Modeling, Texturing (Hand-painted)

Sharktographer Game Logo

Sharktographer Game Logo

Storyboard

Storyboard

A storyboard drawn for our game's pitch presentation, as well as to solidifying the core gameplay loop. At the museum's request, we ended up pivoting our project idea to showcase modern day sea life, taking the educational focus off of the fossil scans we had originally planned on incorporating.

This project was featured on WUFT News' radio

Broadcast on Dec 11th 2023

00:00 / 03:59

Role & Experience

As the primary 2D artist on this project, I used Substance Painter to texture all of the fish models for our game. While I was given the liberty to incorporate a lightly stylized look into my textures, the nature of this project as an educational experience required me to be as accurate as possible to their real-life counterparts. I spent many hours studying real specimens provided by the museum and used ample references in order to achieve this. 

In addition to my work within Substance Painter, I also used Autodesk Maya to retopologize many of the scanned models that we received from the museum. This was a necessary step for our game to be properly optimized for VR. All of our specimens underwent a drastic reduction in their polygon count in this way.

Finally, I provided my team with supplemental artwork when needed- namely the storyboard and the logo.

Overall, working with The Florida Museum of Natural History as a client provided me with a lot of valuable work experience. I am also very grateful to be given the opportunity to showcase our game alongside the museum to our local students, as it led me to witness first hand the impact that the gamification of educational content has on young learners.

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