IronRise was a collaborative effort of all the Game Development students from both the Programming and 3D art streams. While everyone contributed in countless ways, individual programmers took on a core focused topic for the semester.
For the Player, Cate focused on combat and mechanics and Santiago handled the movement and settings. For the NPC’s, John handled the boss character, Spike did the Elite and Rat enemies, and Conor did the Grunt enemy. For the levels and overall game systems, Russell focused on the camera and hazards, Marlena on the UI and HUD, Aiden the audio and build systems, Alex made the gallery and Cole focused on telemetry for playtesting.
This is just a snapshot of the work that took place however, as many people contributed to different, wide-ranging systems, and supported each other with endless bug fixes, discussions and sharing of technical knowledge between programmers and artists alike.
Carley Hendry spearheaded the creation of the Ironrise Boss, taking the character all the way from early concept sketches to final in-engine textures. She worked through numerous iterations to capture that specific blend of menacing presence and “retro-tech” grit, all while ensuring the character remained instantly recognizable at a distance.
She prioritized a clean block-in model that gave rigging and animation a solid base to work from. Visual clarity was further refined through a disciplined 60-30-10 color palette, balancing primary, secondary, and tertiary tones. Carley also collaborated with Tiffany Yu, who was responsible for the modeling and texturing of the character’s saw-blade arm props.
Carley rigged the quadruped robot and created some of the final animations used on the character. The boss needed a variety of animations ranging from jumping, idling, attacking, stomping in anger, and a death animation. Particles by Vince Cardenas helped sell the actions by creating a layer of stylized effects that add to the intensity and mood of the climactic moments in the game.
For more examples of their work, visit their ArtStation pages:
