Art of Cricket
Leading Cricket’s Transformation
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Once upon a time
Overview
Cricket: Jae's Really Peculiar Game had a compelling story, music, and mechanics, but the visuals didn’t match.
I led the transition from tile-based to fully hand-drawn background and animation, guiding the team to make the art the game’s standout feature.
One day
The Problem
Tile-based environments were better than pixels, but they failed to capture the game’s charm.
​​Company wanted organic shapes:
​Boss wanted to move into organic tree shapes that were nearly impossible with tiles
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​Tiles wasted time:
I was not familiar with it. And my non artist colleagues also struggled with tiles.
And because of that
Research
I wanted to understand trending game art and what made them appealing.
What I found
​​Old school game art had been trending for a while
but Cuphead and Indivisible made headlines for being different.
And because of that
Ideation and Executing
​​Start simple
I started with providing draw over roughs just to test how the art would look in game.
​Build up details
Once programmers gave the green light I started adding texture to the environment.
​​Constraint
I wanted to make sure the painterly texture was not being lost due to compression.
And because of that
Results
This art style change gained a lot of traction for the game.
The art became the biggest selling point for Cricket.
Interest from publisher
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11 Bit Studio and Fellow Travelers showed interest
- Nintendo sent a Dev Kit for Cricket to release on Switch
But one day
Iteration: Back to the drawing board
A new artist’s fresh eyes pointed out scale issues and over-ambition. She proposed we simplify the game but I feared we would lose what made Cricket unique.
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I took that feedback, re-framed the goals, and led a second iteration.
​The Feedback and Proposal
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Scale inconsistencies
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Ambitious interiors
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Bare environment
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Simplify the game to save time, money, and keep within the scope of the team size.
​Studio concern
Simplifying the game will take away from what customers love about Cricket.
Goal
​​Come up with a solution that saves time and money, while maintaining what customers loved about Cricket
And because of that
Ideation and Execution
​Scale down and flesh out
I collaborated with the level designer to scale down the map size but flesh it out with buildings.
​​New unique reusable building assets
Created easy to recolor, unique sets of reusable buildings for programmers to mix and match to fill out space while saving artists time.
​​Prioritize the details
With the saved time, the artists are able to prioritize more unique assets, interiors and details that make the game stand out.
Timeline Estimate: 2-3 months
Small set back but will save us time long term.
What this fixed
​​Save time
Reusable assets and scaling down the map saved artists time.
​Use saved time on interiors
This allowed us to keep the cartoon interior style
​​Maintain painterly detail
Keep the details and style that customers loved about Cricket.
​Overall
Simplified and scaled down the game without losing what made the game unique.
Until Finally
Outcome
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The map was scaled down 25% and the town was densely packed with buildings.
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The scaling was consistent, characters did not feel out of place, and they looked like part of the world.
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Interiors that once felt too big now felt like the characters belonged.
Always consider the end user's needs.
Metrics
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57% increase in steam wishlists from the first design change
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Officially signed with a publisher which resulted in an extra 51% increase in steam wishlist
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Created structure when we hired more artists
Constraints
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Being the only artist = having limits
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Lack of knowledge in environment art
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Still had a long way to go in game dev during this time
What I'd Improve
knowing what I know now...
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More explorable buildings
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More variety in NPCs and enemies
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Lighting change, day to night
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​More interactable items
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​Hire more artists sooner