Addendum to "Concept Art from The Upturned" (Patreon)

I found some more old stuff!

This is the old design for the player character, in the first couple days of development. This is probably the first asset made for the game. I only got this far before I decided I didn't have the level of expertise to translate my art style into a 3D character. So I went with something more simple.

(At this point the game wasn't even planned to feature a hotel, but I had a vision of being chased by a hysterically aggressive and large enemy, which would turn out to be Fat Pajama Man.)

This was my first attempt at using inverse kinematics, which went so well that I will never go back. Had I not tried, The Upturned would probably have 80% less cutscenes and animations.

I was happy after I made Shrimp's model, but I was rolling on the floor after I made his rig.

He was the first NPC in the game, and his table-eating ability would be added in much, much later as a gag. Then it would eventually be turned into a mechanic.

A Shrimp fact: Shrimp was named Artemus, up until a couple weeks before the game released. Two lessons: don't be afraid of making changes only because they are last-minute, and try to make new friends. They may have a legendary sense of humor and character-naming.

After Shrimp, the Lil' Nibblers were the next enemy I developed. I decided I would wait as long as possible to introduce them since they would obviously trigger a phobia.

The Lil' Nibblers' AI is calculated by an invisible "hivemind" which just casts rays outward and moves spiders to those lines. This design took me a lot of problem-solving, and there's probably a million better ways! Either way, it may be the most complex enemy in the game for so many reasons.

All I have to show now are these old bat wings. First crows were planned to be giant mosquitos. Then I decided that was too unpleasant, so I was going to make them bats. I can't remember why that didn't go through, but crows were probably just easier and sillier.

One of the biggest lessons I learned from The Upturned is that if you always shy away from attempting the coolest ideas you can think of, the damage done from your cowardice will be immense and invisible.