cleo trumbull

Bugs!

Programs: Maya, Unity

Assigned to design a game that created some feeling in a player, my group chose the feeling of pride once you have accomplished a task in games. From this, grew the idea of being able to show players their progress and give the player some choice in where to place whatever it would be that they gained.

From here we came up with the idea of a bug catching game where players go out during the day and are able to catch bugs, then when they return they can place the jars containing the bugs they catch and as they find more and more bugs, the sticker chart in the room fills in.

Designed and created in one week, for this group project, I took on drawing out the floor plans/top down sketches for the level, as well as designed and modeled the player and all the objects in the bedroom.

Feel free to check out the demo of this level using the button above! While we had very little time for this project and is no where near a finished game, we learned a lot from this exercise and I gained a much better understanding of modeling with Maya in 3d, as well as importing and texturing objects in unity.

Personal Business Cards

Programs: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop

Creating these business cards was a quick project I had for myself. I wanted to practice some of the skills I had been learning about recently and wanted to try creating something that represented me. Making these business cards for myself actually led me to eventually creating this website! You can see how the logo on the front of the card matches the one in the corner of the website and home page, as well as the colors on the business cards are used throughout the website.

I'm glad that I made the decision to redesigned these cards. Between the two designed, I've grown much more comfortable with Adobe Illustrator and because of that I was able to create a design that I think looks much more like me and is a better representation of me.

Originally, the design was different on the back. I thought that this design was cute, but it didn't really look like me. Over time, I realized I wasnt really a fan of the design at all and decided to rework it.

Teddy And Me

Achievement unlocked
Accepted to BostonFIG 2022

Programs used: Photoshop, Unity

This game is focused on giving insight to what kids with nightmare disorder might experience.

I really enjoyed making the day and night versions of many of the scenes in this game. Also, it gave me a great opportunity to practice with making pixel art.

There were definitely many times when working on this project I struggled to figure out how to make the most effective design that looked like the object I was trying to represent with only a few pixels.
Check out the demo for this game here: Teddy and Me

Cursed Game Jam

Programs used: Photoshop, Procreate, Unity
Game Jam Theme: Cursed

The idea for this game was that a girl, Lumi, was found by the player, trapped in the computer. Staring out by opening a totally original game: brokemon, which wouldn't even let the player out of the starter area, the player meets lumi here for the first time.

Through a extremely persuasive argument, the player is convinced to help lumi break free from the computers control and the two begin to solve puzzles that they get trapped in, over time growing closer and closer to the heart of the computer and the witch inside it.

The plan was that over the course of the game, lumi would grow into a more and more pixelated character with each completed puzzle displaying more features about lumi. Like in the second puzzle, when the witch of the computer traps you in a maze however to make it impossible to escape and turns the lights off, we learn that lumi has hair that glows.

After finishing all the puzzles, the game would end with a final visual novel-esque scene where lumi and the player confront the computer witch and ultimately break free.

While this game was a lot of laughs and fun to design, unfortunely due to group time constraints, it never came into fruition.

Talent Show

About the project:

Course: ARTD 2370, Animation Basics

Assignment: Use Maya to individually to create a 3D animation of a simple character with a special and unique talent. Students will model, texture, and potentially create a rudimentary rig for a 3D creature that will perform a talent on-stage for 15-20 seconds.
This project was my first ever experience using Maya for all three stages: modeling, rigging, and animating. It was definitely a struggle to teach myself a large portion of the skills necessary to achieve the outcome I wanted, such as joint rigging, lighting effects for the wand and about materials. For a first attempt, I was happy with the outcome, however I think there is still a lot I can improve on!

The Process:
The first stage for this project was to design a character and create a storyboard for how we wanted the animation to play out, which you can see in these first two photos:

At this point, I had been doing a lot of mini cartoons with the triangle character and they had grown on me a lot. I wanted to try animating them and I felt that the simplistic shapes I had used to create him would be perfect for this project. This was probably the right line of thinking however I definitely got ahead of myself with the story.

While I liked this idea a lot, without having any previous Maya experience, I didn't realize how difficult this story board would be. I knew nothing about meshes and so I was strongly advised to come up with an edited story board that was more achievable for a first attempt and which was more in scope for my current ability.

Instead I came up with this:

This storyboard was pretty close to how I actually ended up animating the project however, once I was animating, I couldnt figure out a clean way to grow a plant out of a stage floor. The whole thing felt weird to me after a while and so I decided to change it to what you see in the video above.

Conclusion: This project was a huge learning experience for me and despite my struggles I am super glad I took this course because I felt that I learned a lot from it! Since then I have grown more and more comfortable modeling in Maya however, theres always more to learn!

EDUCATION

Northeastern University | Boston, MA
Khoury College of Computer Science
Bachelor of Science, Computer Science/Game Development
Minor in Animation

Software

- Adobe Photoshop
- Adobe Illustrator
- Maya
- Adobe After Effects
- Unity
- Clip Studio

languages

- Java
- C++
- Python
- JavaScript
- HTML
- CSS
- C
- Racket

A Bit About Me

Hey there! My name is Cleo and I am a second year student at Northeastern University. I am currently studying Computer Science and Game Design while also trying to find time to work on my own art.
Over the past few years, I have discovered and grown my love for puzzle, art, and adventure games and now hope to make my own!
I've really enjoyed learning about all parts of game design, from the programming elements, to level design, however, my passion lies in creating game art, whether it be pixel art or 3D modeling. I love how much an artist's style and color palette choices can change the entire feel of a game and I hope to be able to convey that passion in my own work.

Outside of game design and art, I also love baking, traveling, fantasy and science fiction books (send me your favorites please!), snowboarding and music. I played piano for a large part of my life and now am learning electric bass. I love all outlets of self expression and am always picking up new hobbies.

Thats me! Thank you so much for visiting my page. Making this website was a fun project for me and allowed me to learn a lot about webdesign, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. I hope you enjoyed your time here and feel free to reach out to me with any questions or comments!

Have a nice day!