WPG: How I got Involved

31st JAN

After the completion of the Blizzard styled work I applied for an Internship at Blizzard HQ in Irvine, California. After I sent a few emails to people associated with the program I discovered that I was ineligible to apply as I had to be studying in the US and have a J-1 Visa, thus my application was void.

The saying goes when one door closes another opens and the day I found out the bad news regarding Blizzard I got chatting to Pete Bottomley about his company. Pete had been working with his fellow game designer Benjamin Hill on starting up a Indi studio called White Paper Games.

Here is a link to the website: http://www.whitepapergames.com/site/about.php

 I had been following there progress for months before this and was fully aware of there commitment and passion for there game in dev Ether. Pete told me that the project needed an environment artist and asked if I could createa wall texture too show what I could do.

 1st FEB

 Pete explained to me how him and ben wanted the games environment to be hand painted, he told me to take a look at a animation short called Lost and Found.

Lost and found

The animation was created in 2008 and was based on the children's book by Oliver Jeffers that was published in 2005. Pete expressed how he loved the simplicity of the style and the pastel colour palette of Lost and Found, he went on to explain how he wanted Ether to have the look and feel of an animation.

About 45 seconds into the trailer the little boy is at gettign into a small boat at the base of a small harbour, the wall texture you can see in the background is what Pete wanted me to try and use as inspiration for the test texture I was going to create for him.

Above is the tileable texture that I created, I sent this through to Pete and then he told me that the other half of White Paper Games Ben was happy with it and that they wanted me to start working on there game Ether.