KittyCassandra

All of these punny pieces are available as prints via Murphy’s KittyCassandra Etsy shop.

Art prints by KittyCassandra on Etsy

Comic #5, match cut to: flashback. Also, earlier issues now have a permanent home here. 

In this installment, TRUNDL’s erstwhile creator learns that the path to dystopia is paved with good intentions. They Live glasses sold separately.

Speaking of promotion, you can test-drive TRUNDL.buddy at Power of Play, this Friday and Saturday (May 20 and 21) in Bellevue, WA. 

Three deep in the prequel-verse! Did you know this is a video game that is in alpha? It is, and you can be among the first to play it. We’ll be at iFest in Seattle this Saturday, May 14, then Power of Play in Bellevue (Seattle-adjacent) May 20-21! More info soon…

FINDING A TONE THAT ISN’T

Our tactical roadtripper, TRUNDL.buddy and the Ghostly Wi-filactery, flings you through a gauntlet of environments, each with their own distinct color palette and style. Between each one, you’ll guide TRUNDL.buddy through decisions, shaping both mind and journey.

IT IS HARD

Early on, I wanted the music to branch alongside the narrative, incorporating different genres to reflect the changing personality of the player’s character. Violent or aggressive choices might transition to death metal or the militaristic styling of Battlestar Galactica. Pacifistic choices might swing more acoustic, Appalachian. Aside from the obvious challenges of producing such a wide variety of cues for every level in the game, there was another less obvious problem. The baseline song would need a neutral tone.

Creating music without emotion has been incredibly challenging for me. I’ve always felt the two are inextricable. But over the last couple of weeks, I’ve discovered an interesting approach. Percussion and rhythm don’t carry much emotion by themselves, just a sense of energy and movement. I stripped out the melodic instruments entirely; built an underscore with just rhythmic textures and a single (tonic) pitch. When the player takes dramatic action, I comment by introducing melody and harmony – emotion.

Another issue I discovered is how quickly the “mix” fills up in-game; ambient sounds, engine sounds, enemies attacking you, obstacles whizzing by and music all playing at the same time. This buries the ambience completely – wind, insects, animal sounds. Ambience serves almost no gameplay purpose, except to ground you in the world. But having grown up with adventure games like Myst and Ico, I value these sounds highly and don’t want them lost.

PROBLEM + PROBLEM = SOLUTION

I needed neutral music and I’ve got buried ambience. The answer to both, musical ambience. I’ve incorporated environmental sounds into the rhythmic texture for each level’s backing theme. The music now feels connected to the place it’s scoring, still serves the gameplay, and provides a neutral base that pivots harmonically with the player’s actions. And I don’t have to worry about the mix as much. That, friends, is how I murdered two avian friend-beasts in the most primal way imaginable. I don’t even know where this rock came from… I… hello?

Check out the video you probably already watched for some quick examples!

Top o’ the blog post to you. My name is Cassie Murphy. I’m an illustrator based in Seattle, and the lead artist for Trundl.buddy and the Ghostly Wifi-lactery. I draw every glowing, drippy, spindly, nubby, blocky, undulating, craggy, Non-Newtonian Thing in this game.

Though this is my first game studio experience, this isn’t my first video game. That distinction goes to a one-button game called Dinglefling, wherein you must release a family of dingleberries from a cat’s sit-upon to land on items in a room. It was a vague realization that I wanted to do 2D game art. When I moved to Seattle, I met some folks that dug my art style, and the amorphous dream that spurred me to move here began to take shape at Spite House.

SWITCHING GEARS

During life in Virginia, my art developed a one-note style and subject matter: Cute. Fat. Cats. My cat paintings got me featured on Animal Planet’s “CATS 101”, Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, HBO’s Game of Thrones Compendium, the Critics’ Choice Awards, E! Online, BuzzFeed, Nerdist, Tor.com, Threadless, TeeFury, Geek and Sundry and Cat Fancy, to name a lot. I painted hundreds of client cat commissions and slung prints at conventions across the Eastern seaboard.

After 8 years of pun-based feline success it began to feel like work (in a bad way) and I gave up the ghost. Er, the cats. To draw ghosts instead.

TRUNDSETTER

(The puns die with me.)

Working on a team like this is a creative’s fever dream. Our SoDo warehouse workspace buzzes with the urgent energy of invention and/or the trillest (only) trap in the building.

It is also the most challenged I’ve ever felt in my professional life. I’ve never needed to work on a team to create cartoons before, let alone whilst meticulously ensuring the art fits not only the lore we’re weaving, but also within the technical bounds of Spine and Unity. The re-work process is a hard reality of team-based art-making; something I’m mitigating through simpler sketches and real-time concepting. Learning, when done right, is never comfortable.

Being the lead artist affords me a surprising measure of creative control over the project as a whole. It feels like pressure, but also gives the satisfying illusion of power in this monster of a process. My favorite thing to do is slip things into my art that inspire a change in the story or gameplay: faces in the canyon walls, ghost expressions conveying their motivations, lava lamp-like innards of massive Wi-Fi towers. Sometimes a design goes over like a lead balloon (R.I.P. wispy skeleton-robot concept). Other times I design a character or environment that elicits rare, sweet guffaws from the lovable gruffians I work with.

THE CANYON

We’re in the final stretch of developing the canyon, which sets the template for future biomes, so I’m hoping we worked out all the kinks. The main kink = my making the dimensions and format of each asset work correctly in-game (see Ray’s post).  It’s a continual learning process between the dev and myself to make the pieces of our cartoon world fit together. For example, the canyon walls shouldn’t follow one-point perspective as I would like to draw it, but rather need a flat bottom so as not to float off the ground. Unity takes care of the perspective. Or breaks it. Unity takes care of and breaks a lot (visually), I’m learning.

I love a challenge. Needless to say – and saying it anyway – I’m pouring my heart into this game, and I can’t wait to show you more. Stay tuned.

Cheers,