Castle Doombad

When I started working at Grumpyface Studios, my first project was Castle Doombad for Adult Swim. At the time, I had limited experience working with game engines, but I quickly realized that my knowledge of 3D workflows could be applied to this new field of animation. Following the game's launch, Castle Doombad received several reviews, which are shown below.

“Castle Doombad” - Original IP created by Grumpyface & published by Adult Swim Games. Made Metacritic's "25 Best Reviewed iOS games of 2014" list and selected as one of Apple's "Best Apps of 2014".

Destructoid.com gave it a 9.5/10 and said, “One of the best games I’ve played on mobile -- full stop.”

User Animations

During my time at Grumpyface Studios working on Castle Doombad, I had the pleasure of animating various elements of the game's user interface, including the title screen, chapter selection, trap shelf, loading screens, and result screens. With my strong skills in asset organization and time management, I was able to efficiently meet our deadlines while bringing each animation to life. It was a thrill to work on these projects and see them come to fruition.

Below are preview animations for the powerups in Castle Doombad. I created them in After Effects and then adapted the effects to Unity using various techniques such as 3D meshes, textures, particle systems, and PNG sequences with the help of Tk2D.

Character Animation

I had the opportunity to transfer the fun and upbeat visual style of Castle Doombad into its game assets. My work began with concept art, such as the Little Knight gif shown on the right, which was originally presented as a static run pose. Using the character's requirements for in-game use, I deconstructed its assets and reassembled everything in Maya. When animating cartoony elements, there is a lot of room for creativity with exaggeration and anticipation, which I enjoyed exploring.